


smoke signals

by fictionalparadises



Category: Tiny Meat Gang (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25959487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalparadises/pseuds/fictionalparadises
Summary: “What do you think your life would’ve been like if the world hadn’t gone to shit?”Or the one in which Noel is a grumpy stranger who just saved a life, and Cody is just trying to survive.
Relationships: Cody Ko & Noel Miller, Cody Ko/Noel Miller
Comments: 58
Kudos: 111





	1. NOEL. Before

Ten year old Noel Miller’s favorite things are watching reruns of cartoons on a Saturday afternoon, going to the skatepark with his friends and playing catch with his dad. In that specific order.

He loves when his mother makes fajitas, and he especially loves it when she makes them on a Saturday afternoon so he can eat them after his favorite tv show has ended. He just _knows_ it’s going to be a good day when he’s sitting in front of the tv, eyes glued to the screen and blankets hogged around him, and he can smell garlic and seasoned chicken coming from the kitchen.

But things change. The world is always in motion. 

A deadly virus breaks out. Around those who are healthy and those who are rapidly going insane by the virus, the sun scorches the world, burning away entire forests. The World Catastrophe Killzone Department desperately searches for a cure, regardless of the cost, but it all ends in failure.

Innocence dies alongside hope.

In this new world, there are no reruns on Saturday afternoon, no skateparks, no games of catch. There are no fajitas.

There is only survival. By whatever means necessary.


	2. CODY. Denim jackets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before i get into it, know that i loosely based this world off of the maze runner!   
> i'm really excited for everyone to read this, been working my ass off for this one. enjoy! x

“Son of a bitch.” Cody’s fingers are hurting from trying to pick the lock, the tools stabbing his fingers painfully every time he tries. He grips them harder, annoyed by Devon’s heavy breathing behind him and the fact that it just _won’t fucking work_.

“Yo, dude, how much longer is it going to take?”

“If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll stab this tension wrench right through your right eye socket,” Cody snaps. He inhales deeply, then adds, “Just one more minute.”

Devon gives him an encouraging pat before he checks his watch. Cody clicks his tongue in annoyance, not needing to hear from Devon that he has to hurry up. He knows that Adrian is going to have to cut the power soon, and that they’ll need to be back at the rendezvous before he does.

They can’t risk running into crawlers, and coming to this abandoned mall they found was already dangerous enough.

At last, the lock gives in. The roller shutter groans as Devon pulls it halfway up, the rusted metal not giving in that easily, and Cody grimaces at the sound.

Devon ducks under, entering the half-raided store and looking around like it’s paradise. “Cody, look, ammo!” He exclaims, rushing towards one of the aisles.

Cody shakes his head, chuckling to himself as he looks around. It’s funny how things like this make them happy now; looting old stores, finding canned food or jackets without holes in the sleeves, discovering— _batteries_.

He lets out a soft gasp. A pack of batteries, still in its original plastic packaging. He grabs the case from where it’s shoved underneath a shelf, staring at it for a few seconds before stuffing it in his backpack. Then he turns, taking out his flashlight and clicking it on.

Cody is just examining a half-trashed radio when Devon’s watch beeps from the other side of the store.

“We should go.”

With a sigh, Cody gets to his feet, deciding last minute to take the radio. It might contain some useful parts.

“Alright,” he says, following after Devon. They’re halfway down the escalator when Cody freezes in his tracks. Devon turns with raised eyebrows. “Shit, I forgot my jacket.”

“Cody—”

But he’s already trailing up the steps backwards, throwing his friend an apologetic glance. “It’s my only good one! I’ll be right back, please stall a minute for me!”

Then he turns on his feet and sprints away, shards of glass crunching under his feet, but not loud enough to drown out Devon’s annoyed “I hate you!”

That means, _be careful_.

His jacket is exactly where he left it. As Cody turns away to leave the store again, he spots an abandoned gun and can’t resist grabbing it, knowing he has to hurry now or he’s going to be screwed. He slings his jacket over his shoulder and stuffs the gun in his waistband.

Stone crunches on his right.

His head snaps up to meet the sight of a lone figure standing in the middle of the corridor. Even from thirty feet away, he can see the bloodshot eyes and the blackened veins, starkly contrasting against sickly pale skin.

“Oh, fuck,” Cody breathes before he spins around, rushing down the escalators as fast as he can. He can already Devon telling him, _oh but I did warn you, didn’t I?_ and whether it’s a conscious decision or not, he speeds up, especially when he glances over his shoulder to see that the lone figure is not only following him, but has also gathered a few friends to join the party.

He’s never going to hear the end of his, Cody thinks right before he rounds the corner, only to see that—only to see that no one is at the rendezvous. He stares at it, the fountain that’s slowly turned green by algae. This is where they agreed to meet up, right? He _knows_ it is, but why aren’t they here, then? Panic slowly starts to seep in—he can’t feel his fingers anymore.

The panic strikes him with full force when the lights go out.

Cody is running like the devil himself is clawing at his heels, lungs burning and mouth tasting metallic. 

His backpack pounds against his back painfully, but he can barely feel and hear it over the blood roaring in his ears and footsteps following him. He’s too afraid to glance behind him, can only focus on what’s ahead and which steps to take and how not to trip, but from the sound of it, there must be a dozen crawlers going after him now.

He has a gun, but Devon has the ammo. Shooting the two bullets that are left in the clip would be a foolish decision, so he stuffs the gun back in the waistband of his jeans and feverishly tries to remember where they set up camp for tonight.

But he can’t go there; he’ll lead the crawlers directly to his friends and the people whose trust he’s just barely earned.

Now the panic is really taking over, no matter how hard he tries to clear his head and come up with a reasonable plan, he’s just running and he’s out of breath and out of logic, fuck, he’s never going to make it—

Cody loses his footing when he glances over his shoulder, trips and falls hard on his tailbone. He can hear something crunch in his backpack (please don’t be the radio, please don’t be the radio) and jumps to his feet as fast as his body allows him.

There’s a feeling of impending doom sinking in his stomach like a stone dropping in water when two figures appear in the hallway on his left—which was his only way out, until now.

He’s going to die here. This is it.

So many years fighting, so many lines crossed, so many morals blurred to survive. All for nothing.

Cody glances over the railing to the floor below him. He could jump, but he’d most likely break his ankle and then he wouldn’t be able to run at all.

Behind him is an electrical room. The wooden door is scratched, the little sign only barely hanging on to its screws.

Two choices. Death or… less imminent death.

He can’t decide which of the two is worse, but the crawlers are closing in on both sides so he turns on his heel, tries the door handle, takes the gun out of his jeans and slams down with the metal grip as hard as he can. It gives in with a loud groan.

Great. Now he’s shattered the lock, he realizes as he closes the door behind him.

It’s so dark he can barely see, but he can make out the shapes of lockers and desks. Without hesitating, Cody pushes against one of the metal archives until it’s in front of the door, blocking the only way in—and out, for that matter.

Faintly, he can hear fists slamming weakly against the wood. His heart is still pounding in his chest, refusing to slow down even though he’s safe for now, and he slides down the metal until he’s sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to his chest.

Cody has already cheated once. He wasn’t even meant to be here. He drops his head to his knees.

In the darkness of the room, he lets out a sob.


	3. NOEL. The ninth traveler

Noel’s fucking car won’t start.

That either has to do with the fact that it’s a piece of shit jeep or that he has run out of gas.

Most likely, it’s both.

It’s his own fault, really—he knew he should’ve stopped at the gas station a few miles back, but his optimism had gotten the best of him: he found a PCB and the necessary capacitors to finally finish building a transmitter, and he knew there was a new solder lying around in one of the shops in the left wing of the mall because he’d seen it and left it lying exactly there, and he just couldn’t stop to refill his tank.

Noel had cursed himself out, left his car where it was and took off to find some fuel.

It took hours upon hours but at last he’d found just enough gas to make it back to the mall. The engine sputtered before the car came to a halt ( _again_. “For fuck’s sake!”), and because it was pretty late already, he’d settled himself on the hood of his shitty jeep, listening to the crickets and watching the sky.

He’d noticed the group of trekkers long before they reached the mall—they were loud, talking at full volume, footsteps thundering, and to top it all off two of them walked across the gravel path. Gravel. Right as the sun was setting.

Did they have a death wish?

Because old habits die hard, Noel had done a head count—nine people. The guy up front was obviously the leader, red sweater tied around his waist, signaling to the people behind him.

Minutes later, the lights came on inside the mall, and Noel couldn’t help but laugh because they _did_ have a death wish.

And when the lights had went off again exactly eighteen minutes later, and moments later only eight people came running out, Noel sat up a little straighter and frowned. One of the trekkers was screaming at the leader, pointing at the building, another was just staring towards the mall with his hands pressed in front of his mouth.

It was stupid because he knew better, but Noel might have felt a little rueful for the travelers who just lost a member of their group. If only he didn’t know the feeling so well.

But it’s a different world today than it was fourteen years ago.

And so Noel had turned away from the group, settled on the hood of his car once again and dozed off under the bleak moonlight.

That still doesn’t solve the problem of not having any gas for his goddamn car when he wakes up.

He’s cursing loudly, pulling on a few wires around the engine as if that will magically make some fuel appear. The shed he’s been living in for the past few months is still twelve miles from here and he’s really just postponing his leave. He doesn’t feel like walking and he doesn’t feel like abandoning his jeep.

Looking up at the mall and squinting against the bright sunlight, Noel decides to grab the solder first, and maybe then he’ll start the blistering walk to the barn.

He takes his backpack, half-empties it before slinging it over his shoulder and entering the mall through one of the broken windows.

Noel keeps to the fences of the mezzanine, where the sunlight directly hits the building from above. Some of the escalators are overgrown with kudzu, and within a few months the entire mall will be overgrown with that same plant. Half of the right side of the building has already fallen victim to it, and despite its creepiness, Noel thinks it has something exceptional. There’s barely any vegetation around, but he’s pretty sure kudzu would still survive if the world burned down.

He’s whistling a tune to an old tv-show he can barely remember, and he feels pretty bright today. If he reaches the shed before nightfall, he can finish building the transmitter probably before morning. Early noon, at the latest.

There’s a trail of blood that looks still fresh. Noel doesn’t linger too long, doesn’t look at it for long either, refusing to let the thoughts of a newly-infected crawler ruin his mood.

The door handle of the electrical room is shattered. Noel kneels and picks up one of the pieces, slowly looking up to where it was supposed be.

With a sigh, he puts it back down and gets to his feet again. _Walk and keep walking, Noel. You have to reach the shed before nightfall._

The solder is exactly where he’d seen it last, so he stuffs it in his backpack and looks around for a bit, trying to find more materials that might come in useful. When he doesn’t find any, he leaves the same way he entered, whistling a different tune this time (what was it from, again? A tv-commercial—that’s it.)

The tune falters when Noel swears he can hear labored breathing and heavy footsteps, but he either imagined it or should leave as soon as possible, because he’s not eager to cross paths with any infected right now.

It’s hot outside, the sun having just reached its highest point in the sky. Noel empties his car, stuffing maps, flashlights, matches and everything he wants to keep in his backpack and pockets.

He opens the hood of his car and pulls an empty cannister from the backseat.

Then there’s a scream echoing through the air, coming from inside the mall. Noel spins on his heel, one hand shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight, and he watches as someone sprints from the main entrance, trips over the chunks of stone lying around and falls—hard.

The ninth traveler.

He holds his breath. The man tries to scramble to his feet but freezes at what’s in front of him—a crawler, creeping out of the darkest corners of the building.

Within a heartbeat, the crawler launches himself on top of the traveler, pulling him back into the shade.

Fuck.

There’s a long moment of hesitation before Noel takes his shotgun with a curse, drops his backpack in the grass and sprints towards the mall.

“Hey!” Noel bellows when he’s close enough, drawing both their attention. He drives the back of his gun into the crawler’s head and the traveler pushes it off him when its grip weakens.

But it’s not enough. They never go down easy.

Noel is pulling the man back by the collar of his jacket, fumbling with the gun in his right hand and letting go to fire a shot. Then he’s pulling the man further, out of the shade and into the sun, and only when they’re far enough in the sunny field, Noel lets himself collapse on his back.

The man lies still next to him, but Noel knows he’s alive by the rapid breathing. If he’s entirely conscious, Noel isn’t sure. Maybe it’s shock.

After a minute, Noel gets to his feet, slings the shotgun over his shoulder and makes his way back to his jeep. He still needs to get the motor oil in the cannister (who knows when it might come in handy—you can’t be careful enough) and it’s a shitty fucking job. 

He has to go now, or if he’s never going to make it before nightfall.

“What the fuck,” comes from behind him, “is happening?”


	4. CODY. Kindness of my heart

There’s an idiot standing in the meadows.

Well, there’s two idiots standing in the meadows; one is fixing his fucking car or whatever the hell, and the other is trying to catch his breath and not have a panic attack from almost fucking dying.

Cody’s standing on his feet, just barely, his hands on his knees, and he’s looking up to the idiot. There’s a few other names popping up in his mind—stranger, savior, Jesus Christ himself—but he’s angry and he feels like cursing until he’s out of breath (which is stupid because, 1. he’s out of breath already, and 2. he’s just angry because a stupid fucking jacket almost got him killed).

The idiot turns with raised eyebrows. “Can I help you?”

It’s all he can do not to choke out a bitter laugh. “Yeah. What—who—where—” Nope. Cody can’t think of any rational question to ask and instead asks the one that’s been on the tip of his tongue this entire time. “Are you the fucking idiot who was whistling the tune of a Dr Pepper commercial?”

“In the mall? Yeah.”

Oh, Christ. Who the hell is this guy? Then realization hits him and Cody readjusts his backpack, straightening. “I need to get back to the group—Adrian is going to kill me—”

“Your little traveling party is long gone, pretty boy.”

“What? How do you know?”

The stranger inhales deeply, almost like he’s annoyed. “Because I saw them leave, last night.”

Cody looks around him as though he can still see them. “Which way did they go? If I hurry, I might still be able to catch up.”

“They were heading east. And uh, good luck with that.” He just turns, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. Cody watches as he closes the hood of his jeep and slings the backpack over his shoulder.

“Hey! Where are you going?” Cody asks, hurrying after the stranger who just… walks away. “Hey!”

The stranger keeps walking, even with Cody next to him. “I’m going home. I found what I was looking for here. You should go too.”

Cody doesn’t know what to say and he can feel panic steadily building up. “We—we should stick together,” he stammers. If there’s one lesson he’s learned in all his years roaming this new world, it’s that going out there alone is equal to suicide.

The stranger halts so abruptly that Cody nearly slips. “Why?”

“You know, uh,” Cody sputters, “two is better than one.”

The guy raises his eyebrows. “I’m not a charity.”

“And I’m not eager on dying. Come on, we have a better shot at this together than alone.”

The stranger huffs out a breath and rolls his eyes before continuing his walk. Cody follows after him. “I’m going home,” he states. After a moment of silence, he glances over. “Weren’t you going to catch up with your travel group or whatever the fuck you wanna call them?”

Shit. Cody clears his throat, unsure of what to do. “I’m never going to catch up to them before sundown, and going alone will definitely get me killed.” He thinks for a moment, trying to rationalize. “Besides, I know where they’re going. I’ll find a way to catch up.”

“So you’re just inviting yourself into my home? How do I know you weren’t bitten or scratched?”

Cody’s cheeks heat. “You don’t have to worry about that.” He quickly adds, “But if you must see for yourself, I can strip right here, right now—”

“Don’t.” The stranger gives him a pointed look.

“And why would you have saved me back there just to leave me for dead?” Cody wonders out loud, hands tightening around the straps of his backpack. He knows he’s got him cornered now, and that even if the stranger decides to dump him somewhere tomorrow, he’ll at least have someone to make it through the night with.

“Out of the kindness of my heart, of course.”

Cody raises his brows. “I thought you weren’t a charity?”

The stranger grumbles something inaudible under his breath, then sighs. “Fine. You can come along for now. But you have to keep up.” With that, he picks up the pace.

Cody throws his head back in agitation for a second before following after him.

There’s a million things he wants to ask, but he keeps them locked inside his mouth, lips pressed shut. They walk in silence, keeping to the main roads. The sun is burning hot, and Cody is grateful for the sliver of clouds that shield them every now and then.

He wonders if the stranger is alone—if he’s been alone for a long time. It looks like it; the way he carries himself, the way he looks around to inspect his surroundings and mainly the way he sometimes mutters to himself.

Cody hasn’t been alone, ever. It’s a privilege, he knows that, to have traveled in groups and with his closest friends by his side. But he’s stuck glancing over his shoulder all the time, freezing at the barest thing that sounds like helicopters or planes. It’s been years since his escape. Five, to be exact. But once you start running, you never stop.

The silence makes everything worse. It amplifies your thoughts, makes small problems seem a hundred times bigger than they are. And in this world, the one thing you always have is silence. Even if you’re with someone else, even if you’re in a group. The threatening, heavy silence remains.

* * *

“What’s your name?” Cody asks, momentarily interrupting that silence. They’ve been walking for three hours and the stranger keeps a murderous pace. Cody’s leg is hurting like a bitch, and it could be from walking, but he suspects it’s from the gash received from his encounter earlier. If he remembers correctly, it’s not from a crawler but merely from scraping over the damn ground while trying to get away from one.

“None of your business,” he replies.

Wonderful.

Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he should’ve left as soon as he could to catch up with the group. He knows that once he returns, he’s going to be in a shit ton of trouble. Adrian will have him on gun-cleaning duty for weeks. Sam and Devon will be furious, but relieved, as well.

But he’s here now, and it’s almost dark outside. If it’s a mistake, he’s already made it—the only thing left to do is keep going, find a way to fix it.

“How much farther is it?” Cody blows out a breath after another thirty minutes, glancing up at the now-inky black sky above him and the stranger, the moon and the stars softly illuminating the bare trees around them. “And shouldn’t we be keeping away from the trees?”

Just then, they reach a large clearing. A shed stands in the center, the wood looking like it’s barely keeping it together.

“This is it,” the stranger says. “If you disrespect the barn, I’ll kick your ass out, whether it’s still dark outside or not.”

Cody throws up his hand in defense.

The stranger opens the door and lets him go in before sliding the large bolt into place on the inside. “And the infected prefer being inside buildings over the outside air. Even if it’s night.”

That makes Cody frown. “So shouldn’t we be, like, not inside here, then?”

The stranger huffs out a laugh, shaking his head and walking over to the ladder in the middle of the barn. “First smart question I’ve heard you ask all day.”

Cody rolls his eyes, clenching his hands into fists and breathing in deeply for a few moments before climbing up the ladder after him. “Are you seriously going to insult me the entire time we’re talking?”

“If you keep being stupid, yeah.” He plops down on the chair, putting his backpack on the desk and instantly going to work.

Cody looks around the attic. It’s a cramped space; a desk near the would-be window, only there’s no glass, a shelf filled with what seems to be parts of old electronics and even some books, on the other side of the room is a mattress and a half-intact drawer. There’s a camping gas stove, which makes Cody gasp softly because those things are extremely rare to find these days, and cans of food are stacked next to it. From the looks of it, the stranger has been living here for a long while. Despite the shitty and broken furniture, it feels like a home.

The stranger lights a few candles on the desk before turning. He gestures to the mattress. “You can lay down if you want to. There’s water in the bottle next to the stove.”

Exhaustion hits him like a brick in the face, so he drinks some of the water and barely manages to get out a word of thanks before he collapses on the mattress. The thousand questions he’d wanted to ask are promptly forgotten.

He watches the stranger’s silhouette, the flickering candlelight making his shadows dance across the wood. He thinks of how surreal it is that he’s lying on a mattress in the attic of someone he doesn’t know but who saved his life mere hours ago. He thinks of how easy a trap it could be—he’s falling asleep and the stranger could make sure he wouldn’t wake up tomorrow.

But would that be so bad? Cody has outcheated death twice already.

It’s fine, he thinks to himself. The stranger is focused on whatever he’s holding in his hands, too caught up in his train of thought to think about anything else. Besides, he doesn’t seem like the murderous, killing-for-fun-type.

He’ll catch up with the group tomorrow. Maybe he’ll even convince the stranger to join them—he’d never admit it, but he feels a twinge of pity for the guy. All alone here, wandering on his own through this scorched world. It’s a different type of loneliness. It could’ve been a conscious choice, and he decides he doesn’t want to know what drove the stranger to make it. As he told him before, it’s none of his business anyway.

He turns on his side, facing away from the stranger. Cody falls asleep with the tune of the Dr Pepper commercial still stuck in his head.


	5. NOEL. Charity

Noel’s eyes are hurting from staring at the red and blue wires for so long. He blinks, pinching his eyes shut for a moment and stretching his arms. When he looks out the window, the sky is already starting to lighten up at its edges.

It’s morning already?

Someone inhales deeply behind him and Noel freezes before he remembers he took the idiot home with him. Stupid decision. Or not. He doesn’t know yet.

The sheets ruffle before the floor panels creak.

“What are you working on?” The idiot’s voice is raspy, thick from sleep.

Noel glances over his shoulder, being met with the sight of the just-awoken idiot, hair ruffled and eyes barely open. He turns back to the desk after a split second and picks up one of the tools. “A transmitter.”

“Really? Impressive.” The idiot eyes the desk; a broken-up radio with missing parts, batteries, a solder, superglue, magnet wire, a shit ton of tools. “So you’re the reason there are no supplies left to find.” 

He shrugs. “First come, first serve.” Noel picks up the fragile device, bringing it closer to his face. When he can’t immediately find out what he’s done wrong, he lays it back down and sighs deeply.

“Have you slept at all tonight?”

“Don’t need to,” Noel shrugs again. “Not right now, at least.” There’s more stumbling behind him; the idiot has moved to his shelf to inspect his little collection of treasures. When he hears metal creak in a way that sounds like it just ripped, Noel whips around, a curse on his lips, but it dies down as he looks at the man. In this light, he can see the bags under his eyes, the sweat beading on his brow, the sickly pale color of his skin. “Dude, you look like shit.”

He staggers on his feet, almost losing his balance. Noel is out of his chair, gripping his arm to prevent him from eating dirt.

“You good?”

The idiot opens his mouth to say something but no words come out. He staggers again, arm slamming against the shelf. His face scrunches up in pain, a low hiss coming out of his mouth as he reaches for his arm.

“Hey, come on, why don’t you sit down first?” Noel helps him back on the mattress while frantically scanning his skin for any bitemarks or cuts. “Were you bitten?” He doesn’t get a reply. Noel smacks his cheek gently. “Hey, answer me. Were you bitten?”

“My arm,” he chokes out.

Noel carefully turns the idiot’s lower left arm, swallowing a curse at the sight of the large cut. Blood seeps onto the ground and on the mattress. The wound looks fresh. Noel glances back to the shelf, where blood now covers the wood too and swiftly gets to his feet, fingers trailing over it until they find a nail jutting out. He must’ve cut himself seconds ago, but that means there’s a different cause for the way he looks and talks.

“I—I have to get to Adrian,” the idiot breathes. “Devon—Sam—”

“They can wait,” Noel cuts in, kneeling in front of him, panic now slowly starting to seep in through the cracks of his fortress. “What the fuck did you do, man!”

“It’s just a graze wound. It’s just a graze wound,” he chokes out. “I promise, it’s just a scratch on my leg. Don’t—don’t think—”

Noel damns whatever privacy there is left in the world and cuts open the pants in one clean slice. And—it’s just a graze. He inspects it a little closer, but despite it being an angry red and not thoroughly cleaned, it doesn’t seem to be infected. No signs of the Flare. No black blood, no dark veins.

He slumps, letting out a breath.

“What’s wrong with me?” The idiot asks, a single tear leaking from his eye. “Am I dying?”

Noel takes the now ruined pants and cuts them into strips. “Hey. What’s your name?” When he doesn’t get a reply, he continues, “I’m Noel.”

“I thought that it was none of my business,” the idiot sniffles.

“Well, I changed my mind.” Noel carefully puts one of the strips around his arm. “This is just gonna hurt a little,” he warns before immediately pulling the fabric taut and tying it in a knot. The idiot lets out a pained hiss, and Noel pats his cheek to make him focus. “Your name?”

“Cody,” he breathes. “My name is Cody.”

Noel nods to himself, looking around the room before his eyes land on a broken golf club. He takes the least sharp piece and twists it into the material to tighten it further, completely cutting off the blood flow beneath Cody’s elbow. “Cody. That’s a good name. Where you from, Cody?”

Cody sharply inhales, face distorting in pain. “Canada,” he gets out.

“Really? Me too. Born and raised in Toronto.” Noel reaches over to an empty water bottle beside the mattress and rips the plastic ring from the top. It will have to do, he decides as he works to fasten the improvised windlass. “Cody? Hey, listen to me,” Noel says, snapping his fingers until he looks at him again, “Cody, you’re not dying.” The makeshift tourniquet will buy him some time, at least, but he still looks like shit and he’s burning up.

“Then what’s wrong with me?” 

“I don’t…” Noel trails off, frowning before jumping to his feet, going over to the little gas stove on the far end of the attic. He crouches in front of it, lifting the water bottle and glancing at the one beside it, both now empty. “There must’ve been something in the water.”

Noel walks back to the idiot on his mattress with a bucket and helps him sit up. “You’re really giving me the impression that you’re new to all of this, you know?”

“I’m sorry,” he blubbers.

Noel shakes his head, repeating _I’m not a charity I’m not a charity I’m not a charity_ in his head while shoving the bucket towards him. If he’s honest, he’s long past that, but he doesn’t want to admit it just yet.

“What do I do with this?” Cody asks, hesitantly taking over the bucket.

Noel gets to his feet. “You’re going to throw up whatever’s left in your stomach,” he says as he turns away and opens the hatch. “I’m going to find some ginger to help with the nausea that’ll come in a minute. I’ll be back.” With that, he climbs down the ladder, leaving Cody behind.

He should have a jar of dried ginger lying around here somewhere. Now that there’s light peeking in through the cracks of the wood, he realizes what a mess he’s let his shed become. Even if the downstairs-part is more of a storage, it looks ridiculous.

Noel has to step over a broken bicycle and a deflated wheel (he thinks it’s from a tractor but he’s not sure—it’s been lying here ever since he moved in) to reach the shelf on the far end of the shed. He’s scanning the contents for anything that looks like ginger, his fingers gliding over the glass bottles, containers and cans as he does.

When he returns ten minutes later, it’s with a small corked bottle in his hand. Cody has laid back down on the mattress, the bucket a few feet away, and he gets up to his elbows when he hears Noel approach.

Noel hands him the bottle and picks up the bucket with a crinkled nose.

“Uh…” He starts, looking at the contents of the bottle.

Christ. Noel rolls his eyes. “Chew it, swallow it, snort it, I don’t give a shit. Just make sure it’s in your system.” Then he turns on his feet and leaves once again to empty out the bucket.

He closes the hatch as he returns, walking over and crouching in front of the stranger he’s let into his home so carelessly. Briefly, he wonders if this was a mistake, but in that case he’s already made it.

“Sleep it out,” he says. “And if you shit all over my bed, I’ll kill you myself.”

* * *

Cody sleeps for nine hours and it’s already dark outside by the time he awakens. Noel turns around at the pained grunt he hears, shutting off the radio he’s almost finished now.

“How you feeling?”

Cody groans, slowly raising a hand to his head. “Like someone smashed in my skull. Or tap danced on my stomach. Or stabbed my arm with a screwdriver multiple times. Or all of those.”

“I’d call it improvement,” Noel says.

Slowly, Cody tries to sit up, turning his wrist with wide eyes. “You make tourniquets often?” He attempts to joke, but his voice cracks and he just sounds shaky.

Noel cleaned and bandaged the cut while Cody was asleep. He’d resisted the urge to brush his hand over Cody’s forehead like his mother would always do to him whenever he had a fever. Just getting reminded of that memory had left Noel unsettled, so he’d backed off for the rest of the day. “I’ll still need to stitch it if you don’t want it to get infected,” Noel says, clearing his throat. Then he points to the little stove. “There’s some cooked rice on there. You should eat something. Not too much, though.” Unless he’d like to start throwing up again.

Cody’s eyes grow to the size of dinner plates. “Rice?”

At that, Noel can barely withhold a smile. “Rice,” he affirms. He found it while raiding houses months ago, sealed in air-tight bags, locked away in a pantry in the basement. Turns out it can last up to thirty years if preserved that way, so Noel rations it, careful not to run out soon.

He shifts, turning back to the radio while Cody helps himself to some rice.

“Holy fuck,” he hears from behind him and Noel fails to keep in a chuckle this time because that had been his _exact_ reaction when he ate rice again for the first time in fourteen years.

Just plain, white rice. Who knew it could be like a godsend?

“What are you working on?” Cody asks in between bites. At Noel’s pointed look, he stops chewing. “I already asked that, didn’t I? Fuck, I can’t even remember.”

Noel picks up the device in front of him and holds it up in the air. “I finished the transmitter. Just need to fix the pager and connect it to the radio.”

“You built this all by yourself?” Cody puts down his bowl, looking slightly disoriented as he tries to focus on the radio. At Noel’s nod, he lets out a murmured _’impressive’_ before squinting his eyes and blinking slowly. “I think I should probably lie back down,” he says then, straightening and almost tipping over.

“Jesus, man.” Noel grabs his elbow to steady him. With a little help, Cody manages to make it to the mattress before collapsing on top of it. Within a minute, he’s fast asleep, soft snores coming from his mouth. Noel will have to stitch the cut on his arm when he’s asleep, then. He can’t wait much longer, and it’ll hurt less like that as well.

Noel watches him for a while, his heart feeling somewhat empty at the sight, so peaceful and melancholy and heart-wrenching all at once.

He’s been alone for so long that it’s strange to watch someone else sleep—to just watch someone else, in general. And he’s used to being alone, but now that he’s been talking with someone, he realizes how _lonely_ he’s been, too.

Not only that—he realizes that as much as loneliness is a vulnerability, accompaniment might be an even bigger weakness.

* * *

After one and a half days, Cody is back to his old self. No signs of fever, no sickly pale skin, no more grated memory. Noel lost count of how many hours he slept.

The sun has already started its descent towards the horizon, showcasing the carcasses of what used to be trees, now nothing more than burnt trunks and shrunk branches, and the orange light casts long, skeleton-like shadows on the sandy ground.

Noel is sitting by the window, hands shaking in frustration because he’s been trying to fix whatever the fuck is wrong with the radio for hours now and he can’t seem to find the cause of its malfunction. He curses loudly and slams the screwdriver on the windowsill, dropping his head.

“Let me see,” comes from behind him. Noel glances over his shoulder.

“What do you know about radios?” He asks, sounding agitated. He realizes it’s not really fair because Cody’s been awake for barely half an hour and he’s just trying to help, but fuck if he’s not angry for not managing by himself.

Cody gets to his feet, sitting on the few inches of windowsill left and snatching the radio out of Noel’s hand. “More than you think.”

Noel sighs, leaning back in his chair. In his mind, he goes through the steps again. All the wires were connected, so that couldn’t have been it. Maybe he soldered something wrong, but he checked that twice already—

“Here,” Cody points and Noel’s attention snaps back to the radio. No fucking way that the idiot fixed it within two seconds— “This wire should be connected to the right one, just a quarter of an inch.”

Noel’s eyes widen as he takes over the device, carefully following up the advice. He feels like he’s been holding his breath, and he doesn’t dare exhale when he puts it down and turns it on.

Loud static comes from the speakers.

Noel lets out a breathy laugh in triumph. Then he turns to Cody. “What the fuck, man. You did it!”

Cody just laughs at his exhilaration.

The moment dies down as Noel focuses on the static, slowly turning the button the change channels.

“So,” Cody breaks the silence after a few minutes, “now that the radio works, who are you trying to reach?”

Noel stares at him for a few long seconds, trying to decide if he should tell him. He lets out a long sigh, leaning back in the chair. The backrest creaks under his weight. “Uh, there’s… there’s rumors. That there’s a safe place, where _they_ can’t reach.” He lets out another breath, suddenly feeling a little ashamed.

He’s running. From the virus. From the Killzone Department. It’s turned into _them_ and _us_ , and he’s never really sure if ‘them’ means those who’ve been infected or those who are exploiting the immunes for a cure. If there even is one.

“Rebels,” he goes on, “who are searching for a place where the sun hasn’t burned away the land. I don’t know if they’re anything more than just rumors. I don’t know if they’re real—”

“They’re real.”

Noel’s heart drops to his fucking feet, his head snapping up to meet Cody’s gaze. “What?”

“They’re real,” he repeats, eyes steady, unlike Noel’s heartbeat.

And so everything changes.


	6. CODY. Radio silence

Cody feels like the past days have been a fever dream. One that’s still going as the stranger—Noel—looks at him with wide eyes.

“You—” He drags a hand through his hair, staring at Cody for a few seconds in silence before he asks, “They’re real?”

“Yes,” Cody says. The rebellion is very real and probably the only one capable of actually harming them. “As real as they can be.”

“How do you know? How do you know they’re not just more than ghosts?” Noel asks, a sharp undertone in his voice that makes Cody wary of his next words. Once that seed of doubt and suspicion is planted, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of, so Cody has to annihilate it before it can take root. Especially because he’s realized he needs Noel to survive, and well… maybe Noel even needs him.

“Maybe I believe in ghosts,” Cody says. “Especially if I hear them chattering on the airwaves.” He can see the wheels behind Noel’s eyes spinning as he tries to compartmentalize his thoughts. “The rest of my group, the people I was traveling with—we were going there. They’re hiding in the mountains, at least that’s what we heard.”

Noel lets out something between a laugh and a huff, the astonishment visible on his face. “They’re real,” he says, more to himself than to Cody. Then he turns, gesturing to the radio. “Do you remember the frequency?”

“They change it every month or so. To get the Killzone Department off their tail." Cody hesitates for a moment, letting out a soft sigh. “And before I got separated from the group… a few days before, we couldn’t find their frequency anymore. They’d only changed it a week prior, and then suddenly just—radio silence.”

Noel frowns, tapping on one of the speakers with a finger. “And you were still going there?”

“We don’t know what happened. If they just cut all communications because of safety precautions or if something actually happened to them. But it’s about a week on foot from here, so we decided to take our chances.”

Cody shifts on the windowsill, accidentally bumping his lower left arm against the edge and hissing in pain. Barely two seconds later, a red stain on the bandage spreads as blood seeps into it.

“Jesus, man,” Noel mutters. He gets to his feet, pointing for Cody to sit in his chair as he turns off the radio and sets it aside.

Carefully, Noel cuts through the bandage. The metal of the scissors is cold against Cody’s skin and he barely dares to watch when he turns his arm, afraid of what sight might greet him.

“You didn’t pull any stitches, thank fuck,” Noel says after a few seconds of inspecting. “Just knocked it against the windowsill too hard.”

The wound itself doesn’t look too bad, either. The stitches are neat and precise, the cut is cleaned thoroughly. He’s lucky he didn’t hit an artery and even more lucky he didn’t bleed out because of the tourniquet. All of it is thanks to Noel.

Noel wraps a fresh bandage around the cut, his gaze straying to the radio every now and then.

Cody quietly thanks him once he’s done and drifts back to the mattress. He watches as Noel sits in front of the window, his silhouette almost blending into the darkness of the night, his gaze glued to the radio.

“Noel?”

“Hm?” When it’s quiet for a moment, Noel half-turns to look over his shoulder.

“When’s the last time you slept?”

The question visibly catches him off guard. “Last night. Why?”

“…you slept in the chair, didn’t you?” Cody moves into a sitting position.

Noel raises a brow and crosses his arms. “And what about it?”

Cody huffs out a breath. “Maybe you should sleep here for once. Before you get chronic backpains, or whatever the fuck.”

“No, I’m good,” he says, but from the way his eyes flit to the mattress, Cody knows he’s considering it.

“You’re the most hardheaded person I know, and I’ve only met you three days ago.” Cody rolls his eyes, scooching to the side. “There’s enough space, Noel. Don’t be so fucking childish and just sleep here.”

Noel is quiet for a few moments. “Say please.”

“What?” Cody is wondering how worth it it’d be to punch him in the face. Very satisfying, he thinks, but the black eye he would get in return would probably not outweigh the benefits. “Please.”

A smug smile slowly spreads across Noel’s face as he gets out of the chair and lies down next to Cody, making sure to leave at least a feet of space between them.

When it’s completely dark, both inside and outside, Cody stares at the ceiling and tries to refrain from asking a million questions at once. He’s not used to having someone so close to him and he’s not sure if he’ll like the memories it might make resurface.

After a few minutes, he softly asks, “You want to go there, don’t you? To the mountains?”

He can hear Noel’s steady breath beside him. “Yes.” He shifts. “If there’s even the slightest chance I can stay out of their hands, I’m gonna take it.”

Cody draws his lower lip between his teeth, withholding himself from telling Noel how much he understands that.

“We’re gonna have to be careful if we want to reach them, though. You never know what you’re going to run into.” 

“So it’s _us_ now, huh?” Cody jokes, though feels so fucking relieved he could kiss him right now (he only doesn’t because that would probably result in a black eye as well).

“Shut the hell up,” Noel says. Then he turns on his side so his back is facing Cody.

Cody starts laughing. Whether Noel is actually angry or not isn’t clear but it doesn’t really matter anyways, not when Cody laughs for the first time in who knows how long. It’s not even that funny, but it’s probably the relief, or the absurdity of this whole situation, or the sleep deprivation, and he can barely stop laughing.

A few minutes of silence is all he manages before he lets out a chuckle again. Noel groans.

“I _will_ punch you in the nose if you don’t let me sleep in silence.”

Cody clamps together his lips to keep in another laugh. “Feel free. I’m officially your responsibility now.”

Noel just breathes in sharply. “I’m already regretting this decision.”

“That took you about two days longer than most.”

He can hear as Noel slaps a hand against his forehead. “I can’t stand you.”

“That’s why we’re laying down.”

Noel’s only response is pulling his pillow over his head with a groan, which just makes Cody laugh harder.

And when Cody finally falls asleep half an hour later, for the first time in five years, he feels _content_.

* * *

The shed truly is a shit-show. Cody didn’t know that _this_ was below them, but then again, he hadn’t really been observant the past days.

When he wakes up, the sun is barely peeking through the trees and Noel is already scuffling around, a backpack propped up on the chair, a few things set out on the desk. A map takes up most of the space, candleholders and chipped mugs on the corners to prevent it from curling up. A few notes and lines have been drawn on with pencil.

“How long have you been awake?” Cody says by way of greeting, his voice still a little hoarse from sleep.

Noel glances over his shoulder. “An hour. Couldn’t sleep any longer, got lots of things to do.”

Cody kicks back the cover before getting up. “What are you doing?” 

“Packing.” Noel rolls his shoulders as Cody makes his way over, scribbling something else down before he drops the pencil. “We should leave tomorrow morning.”

“Why not today? Packing doesn’t take _that_ long.”

Noel raises a brow in challenge before jerking his chin to the hatch. Cody just huffs out a breath before opening it and climbing down the ladder, careful not to hurt his arm or pull any stitches, and when he lands with both feet on the floor he can only gawk around, his mouth stuck in an o-shape.

“Jesus Christ.”

Shelves from floor to ceiling against every wall and even in the middle of the room, filled with jars, cans, bottles, containers, boxes, tools—everything a person could possibly need, it’s here. Noel jumps down next to him with a soft thud.

“And you have all this for what, exactly?”

Noel shrugs casually. “I’ve been living here for four years.” As if that explains his stash of literally everything. Maybe he should press on, ask where he got all this stuff, question what he planned on doing with it when so much seems practically useless, but he’s stuck on the words ‘four years’ and all he wonders is, _alone?_

Has Noel been alone for so long?

With that comes a more horrifying thought: has he been alone for _longer?_

Cody forces himself to walk to one of the shelves to get his mind off the question, makes himself read the labels and tags. Tomato soup. Sweet corn. Crushed pineapple. A jar labeled lentils, which he recognizes to be Noel’s handwriting. A container of cornstarch with the same scribbled handwriting.

The shelves are divided in sections, Noel tells him. Food. Food that could be used as medicine. Tools, weapons, old equipment and machinery.

“You’re aware we can’t take all of this, right?” Cody says, only half-joking because god damnit he wishes he could take all of it.

“I know. I need today to sort through most of it, decide what to take and what to leave here.” Noel clears his throat, nodding more to himself than to Cody before he turns around and vanishes up the ladder.

Cody heaves a sigh, looking around for a little longer. Noel doesn’t seem like the guy to ever admit being sentimental, but leaving this place will be hard regardless of how shabby it is. He’s lived here for four years, and even Cody can see that it’s slowly turned into a home. Sorting through this stuff won’t take up an entire day, but whether he’s consciously doing it or not, Noel’s making it an excuse to not have to leave just yet.

And Cody, well.. Cody gets that in more ways than one. He respects it.

So he gets to work, taking up small tasks that won’t have him rooting through Noel’s stuff. Noel is quiet for most of the day, and even if Cody doesn’t see it, he’s grateful for it.

* * *

The next morning is quiet, a certain tension thick in the air from the moment they awake. The sun isn’t fully up yet by the time they get outside, backpacks hoisted onto their backs and ready to go. To Cody’s surprise, however, there’s a 4x4 half-hidden just outside the clearing of trees, nearly identical to the one Noel left at the mall.

“We can last about half a day with the amount of gas we have. It’ll at least give us a head start,” Noel says, slinging his pack in the backseat before opening the trunk. “Can you fill the tank? I forgot something inside.” With that, he heads back. Cody watches him go with a soft frown, heart sinking a little at the realization they probably won’t return to this place. Ever.

He takes a few of the gallons from the trunk and fills up the tank. When Noel returns, he has something clenched in his fist that he stuffs in his pockets, a somewhat empty expression on his face. He says nothing as he takes a seat behind the wheel and slams the door shut.

Cody sits next to him, his heart skipping a beat when Noel starts the car and revs the engine. God, he hasn’t heard that sound in so long. Adrian used to find it too risky to hotwire a car, not to mention that they’d barely fit in one with the nine of them and the scarcity of fuel.

But there’s something about Noel that intrigues him—the mysteriousness, the peace of mind he has, the indifference. It’s so different from what he’s used to with Sam and Devon, who know him through and through, who know every misstep he took and mistake he made. It’s very freeing to be with someone who doesn’t know him, at all, even though there’s always that voice telling him he should be careful, that the secrets he’s carrying will eventually spill.

For now, he sets those thoughts aside, especially when the engine roars as Noel accelerates.

The only thing they leave behind is a cloud of dust. It conceals the shed until both are out of view.

Noel knows the area well and soon enough they access a highway, having to dodge abandoned cars every now and then.

Cody sticks his head out the window, eyes watering. He just laughs as he flops back into the seat, wiping away the tears and he watches the sun come up, bright and hot and, for once, welcoming.

He feels better than he has in days.

When he glances at Noel, even he has the hint of a smile on his face, and Cody is somehow, someway, really glad he met him.


	7. NOEL. The camp

It’s just after one p.m. when they run out of fuel. The sun is at its highest point in the sky so Noel points to a half-collapsed building where they can find shelter in for a little while.

He rolls out the map and hands the radio to Cody, who fumbles with the frequency as Noel explains the route he’s planned out and how long he thinks it’ll take them to get to the anticipated rendezvous. Just as he finishes talking, Cody finds the right frequency, but instead of static there is just silence. Somehow, it’s more unsettling.

“It’ll be fine,” Noel says. It _has_ to be fine.

Maybe if he says that often enough, they will both start to believe it.

Cody props his backpack under his head and closes his eyes. Noel’s noticed the tired look on his face already—being sick took a larger toll than he’d expected, and his arm is still healing—so he lets him have the moment of rest, knowing he’ll need the energy for the rest of the day.

Noel inattentively traces the route on the map with his index finger as he looks at the relaxed look on Cody’s face, chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.

He can’t tell if the feeling in his chest is that of his heart sinking or skipping a beat.

After an hour, he wakes Cody from the nap, and then the real journey starts.

* * *

Six days of walking. Six days of sweating in the burning sun overhead, six days of sore feet, six days of broken conversation.

Hotwiring a car seemed useless. Driving through the mountains would take more gas and they were short on that already, so they’d instead chose to walk.

And… it’s not as bad as Noel had originally expected it to be. Cody doesn’t talk that much, and when he does it’s about actually interesting stuff. When it’s quiet, it’s a comfortable silence.

Noel isn’t sure how much farther the camp is. If it even exists at all. But he refuses to think about that possibility, he just keeps going, keeps pushing. Cody seems to have the same mindset.

The sun is setting when Noel decides to call it a day. They’ve reached a pile-up of cars on a curvy mountain road and he points to a car with a large hood and still-intact windshield.

When they have settled on the hood, it’s quiet, as it always is outside these days, but this time the quiet feels serene. The sun dips closer to the horizon, nearly disappearing behind one of the mountains. The sky has turned into a palette of pink, purple and blue.

Cody props one hand behind his head and lets out a long sigh. “Sometimes I forget it can still be beautiful.”

“What? The sun?” Noel asks, eyes trained on the view.

“Everything. The sun, the sky, the world.” He’s quiet for a second. “I’m so busy trying to survive that I forget to look around and appreciate what’s left.”

Noel lets out a humorless laugh. “What’s left isn’t much to begin with.” But Cody is right. “Yet looking at it like this, it’s a reminder that there’s still _something_ left.” There’s still a reason to survive.

The sky starts to darken at its edges as the sun vanishes behind the mountains. After a long silence, Cody asks, “Do you think the Killzone Department will be able to find us?”

Noel contemplates his response before answering. “I think they’ll be able to find us everywhere we go. Whatever choice we make, they’re already ten steps ahead. You can’t outrun some people.” It’s a harsh truth, one he’s been trying to come to terms with for a long time now.

“And that doesn’t scare you?”

“They’ve never been after me in the first place,” he says.

Cody frowns, giving him a sidelong glance. “What do you mean?”

Noel takes a small piece of fabric out of his pocket, thumb brushing over the worn material. It’s a label with his name on it, ripped from one of his old jackets. One his mom made for him back when she was still alive, and as he grew out of it, he could barely bear to throw it out. “They didn’t want me,” he simply says. “Took my sister, but they left me behind.”

He doesn’t remember much of it, if he’s honest. Probably suppressed the most of it. He recalls the tunnels leading to the trains, dark and wet and smelling like rot, he recalls bleak light and his mother’s hand tightened around his. His sister, a year older than him, her hair half-up in a bun that he always used to tug on to annoy her.

Then people in black uniforms and a woman in a white coat pointing to his sister. Her screams as they dragged her away, him trying to go after her, his mother pressing him into her side and shushing him but unable to conceal the fear in her own eyes.

Cody is quiet for a long moment, eyes briefly flickering to the label in Noel’s hands. “What about the safe haven?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally. “It depends how far away from the main land we’d be, I guess.”

Cody nods. “I don’t think they’ll follow us overseas. Too big of a risk for the supplies they have. They’re weaker because of the rebellion, anyways.”

Somewhere in the back of Noel’s mind, there’s an itch, telling him to pay attention to the words, to Cody’s face, but he clenches his fist and lets it go. He stuffs the fabric back in his pocket and zips up his jacket, eyelids already drooping.

“Get some sleep,” he says, shifting into a more comfortable position. “We leave at sunrise.”

* * *

“Uh, Noel?”

“Hm?” he hums as he’s stuffing his few belongings in his backpack. It’s still early and they’re about to leave. When he doesn’t get a reply, he turns around with a raised brow to find Cody standing in front of the car next to them, brows furrowed.

“I think you should see this.”

He walks over, instantly finding what Cody’s hinting at—bullet holes. Not just one. The whole car is covered, wind shield cracked with a perfect hole in the middle, and when Noel glances around, he notices that many of the cars share the same damages. And when he looks for a little longer…

“It’s all on one side only,” Cody notes at the exact same time he realizes.

Noel nods, his heart jumping at what it could possibly mean. “What if the rebellion is close, then? They keep guard from the mountainside.” To shoot at potential dangers.

Cody’s eyes widen as he undoubtedly has the same understanding. Then he says, carefully, “What does it mean that we’re not being shot at right now, then?”

Either that they aren’t seen as potential dangers or that the radio silence meant an abandoned camp all along.

“I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”

They trail up the road, dodging the cars and climbing over roadblocks. Noel’s legs start hurting as they descend again, keeping a slow pace not to trip over any debris.

After an hour, they round a corner and—

A camp.

But it’s abandoned.

Noel’s heart sinks right into his shoes as he looks at the remnants of it. Collapsed tents, burnt-out jeeps, chests with food and ammunition destroyed or burned. He takes it all in, unable to say anything. Bodies are scattered across the sandy ground, some dressed in the black attire that he’s come to hate so fiercely, others in ragged and dirty clothes. The whole camp smells like rot, a stench that Noel faintly recognizes and it makes his head ache and his stomach roil.

Innocent people, brutally murdered. The Killzone Department has gotten to them and tore them apart like so many before them. They bring destruction and do it in the name of science.

Suddenly, Cody grips his wrist so tightly that it nearly hurts.

Noel looks at him but his gaze is fixed on something else. He follows his line of sight, jaw going slack, and he gently moves up his hand to intertwine their fingers.

There, in the sand, lies a red sweater, a dark brown blood stain on it. Inches to the left is a body, sickly pale and rotten.

Cody staggers towards it. Noel doesn’t have the heart to hold him back, though he knows that the image will be branded in Cody’s mind to haunt him for whatever nights to come.

“He—I—” he croaks out once they’re standing in front of the body— _Adrian_ —and Noel isn’t sure what to say or to do because he’s been through this, saw his own mom lying in front of him, and there are no words to console or take the hurt away. Cody staggers on his feet, a broken sob escaping from his throat, and Noel grabs his arm with his free hand, spinning Cody towards him.

Cody stares at him for a second, his expression heart-wrenching and eyes full of tears, then stumbles into Noel’s arms.

“You’re okay,” Noel whispers, arms tightening around him. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“I never—I thought I’d—” Cody sobs into Noel’s shirt, clinging onto him like he’s a lifeline.

“I’m so sorry, Cody,” he breathes, and he is, more than he could ever know. He holds Cody for minutes until his body stops shaking, until the sobs have died down.

Gently, Cody breaks free from the embrace, but he still intertwines their fingers. Noel squeezes.

He looks around the camp, feeling burned out and at the end of his rope.

“What now?” Cody asks, voice a little hoarse.

 _I don’t know._ If _they_ found this camp, they know a lot more than Noel had originally thought. But, he realizes as he looks around, there aren’t enough bodies compared to the size of the camp, the amount of tents and supplies lying around. That either means the Department took all of them or that some escaped.

He’s just about to share the thoughts with Cody when there’s a loud static coming from Cody’s backpack a few feet away. They share a second of bewildered eye-contact before they dive towards it.

“You left it on?” Noel asks, watching as Cody roots around his pack for the radio.

“Apparently,” he says with a shake of his head, pulling out the antenna.

“And you didn’t change the frequency?” Slowly, Cody raises his gaze to Noel and shakes his head again. Their attention snaps back to the radio when a faint voice comes through, gravelly and nearly inaudible. Cody fumbles with the dials until—

 _“Leader to pilot, new rendezvous is established, over,”_ a rough, male voice declares.

Noel grabs Cody’s hand and squeezes. They both stare at the radio, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief despite what realities were discovered minutes ago.

 _“Pilot to leader, we’re well on our way here. How long do we have? Over,”_ a deep voice sounds from the speakers.

_“Repairs will take up roughly six weeks, hopefully with no delays. We’re working as hard as we can. Have you caught up to those three idiots yet? Over.”_

_“We picked ‘em up a mile ago at one of the checkpoints. Oh, don’t look so sour, hermano, we’ll make it in time. Right, we’re gonna go. New frequency next time, over.”_

_“Roger that. Good luck in the city, don’t get caught. Over.”_

_“I’ll see you in El Pueblo, leader. May the angels guard us. Good luck. Over and out.”_

Then the radio cuts off and this time, static fades back in. Noel lets out a long breath, slumping in the sand. Cody stares at the radio as though it will turn back on if he looks hard enough.

The rebels are still alive. And they’re reorganizing. That means there’s a chance they can reach them. There’s a chance they can make it to the safe haven. But—

“What in God’s name is El Pueblo?” Cody asks. He looks a little lost, face bordering on hopelessness and tear-tracks evident on his cheeks. Yet his hand is still in Noel’s, and Noel doesn’t really want him to let go anyway.

He gently brushes away the tracks on Cody’s cheeks with his sleeve as he thinks. From the depths of his memory, it triggers something, but it’s just out of his reach.

“Not what,” he says. “Where.”

They were talking about a rendezvous, whoever _they_ are. If they’re repairing something that’s going to take up to six weeks, it must be big. It must be their way out.

“Repairs. What are they repairing? How likely is it that they’re fixing a plane? One of them was a pilot,” Noel thinks out loud.

Cody shakes his head. “Planes are unlikely. It would attract too much attention and the Department still controls a lot of cameras around the continent. Airports would be too big of a risk. And him being a pilot doesn’t necessarily mean something—he could be an ex-pilot, or an ex-air force.”

Noel draws a circle in the sand with his free hand before glancing back at Cody. “Not to mention the fuel. Most of the jet fuel has been raided and used for cars. They’d never gather enough to take off with a fucking plane.”

Cody raises a brow. “Jet fuel can be used for cars?”

“Don’t judge me,” Noel shrugs. “I tried and it worked.” He found out years ago. Back then, it was just another move in the game of survival. “Boats?”

“That’s possible,” Cody says, slowly nodding. “A lot of people can board and it’d be difficult for them to find the harbor they’re departing from.”

And it bears the unanswerable question where exactly this harbor is. West coast? East coast? Where exactly is El Pueblo? The rebels aren’t stupid enough to use the town’s real name.

“Alright,” Noel says as he gets up with a sigh, pulling Cody along by his hand. “Let’s find a place to sleep tonight. We can come up with a plan tomorrow.”

Cody agrees silently, tired and somber and trying to compartmentalize his grief.

It’s still early but an hour later, they’ve made themselves comfortable on the hood of another car, far away from the camp and all its horrors. They’ve rolled up their sleeves and kicked off their shoes, the air still warm.

“Noel?” Cody says after a long moment of silence, briefly glancing at him.

“Hm?” He looks up. His hands are clasped behind his head and he catches Cody’s eye, his face gilded by the golden sunlight.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” He asks, softly frowning.

Cody gives him a half-smile. “For being with me.”

He grabs his shoulder and squeezes gently. When he smiles back, he realizes it’s a genuine one. “Always.”

* * *

It’s the middle of the night when Noel shoots up, eyes wide in realization. Cody is awake in an instant. “Los Angeles,” he breathes. 

“What?” Cody mutters, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“Los Angeles. El Pueblo is a different name for LA.” His grandfather used to call it that for whatever reason.

Cody’s lips part as he thinks it over. Then he lets out a laugh. “Oh, wow.”

“What?”

 _“May the angels guard us._ Two hints in the same message.”

Noel carefully lays down again, chuckling softly. “The City of Angels. Or whatever the fuck is left of it.”

Cody flashes him a grin. “I suppose we’re going to see that for ourselves.”

He supposes they are. Noel smiles to himself. _We_.


	8. CODY. Constellations

Noel, Cody finds out, is particularly good at hotwiring cars. It’s by luck that they find a car with a half-full tank and within five minutes, the engine roars to life.

They’ve been walking for a week already and to say they’re exhausted is an understatement. Cody’s been quiet for the majority of the time, trying to sort his thoughts and accept the truth of Adrian being gone.

The morning they were leaving for LA, he looked around the remnants of the camp with a sinking heart and nauseous stomach. Somehow, not finding Devon and Sam among the bodies was both a relief and a torment at the same time. He’s not sure if they made it out alive or if they were taken captive by the Killzone Department, but the fact that there’s a chance that they are still alive is a gift to him all the same.

He has more than enough time to overthink, which only adds to the anxiety. Noel sometimes starts about random subjects like which boxed mac ‘n’ cheese he preferred as a kid or rodents ranked from best to worst (hamsters being the best and guinea pigs being the worst, though “rats are a close second to being the worst”), and whether Noel can judge from Cody’s facial expressions how stressed out he is or not, Cody is grateful for the distractions every time.

They found a car with a half-full tank and he’s fucking relieved to have a break from the walking. Now that they’re driving for as long as the fuel will hold, Cody is happy to stare at the landscapes flying past.

Noel is apparently also good at picking the roads that aren’t blocked by abandoned cars and dodging old checkpoints. Cody is pretty much convinced it’s his superpower at this point.

“Okay, but why guinea pigs as worst?” He speaks up after a long moment of silence, lifting his face from his arm propped up on the arm rest and turning away from the window.

Noel snorts. “You’re still going over that?” He throws Cody a pointed glance. “Okay, hear me out. Guinea pigs are just useless. They get scared all the fucking time, you can barely fart or they’re flat against the ceiling, you can’t even pet them properly because they run around like crazy. You can barely pick one up—”

“I could!” Cody protests, remembering that one of his friends used to have a guinea pig when he was younger. “You just have to be gentle! The fact that _you_ throw around your pets however you like…”

“Uh-uh, I ain’t ever taking a guinea pig as a pet, man. Those things are fragile as fuck. And apparently they need a really strict diet of all these vitamins to keep ‘em healthy. I mean, who has the time for that?” Noel slaps his hands on the wheel to exaggerate his point, and Cody fails to withhold a smile. “Rats, on the other hand, yeah they’re disgusting but at least they’re entertaining to watch, and they’re not such sensitive fucks like— _what_ are you smiling at?” Noel interrupts himself, raising a brow.

Cody props his chin on his hand and tilts his head as he stares at Noel. “You’re very cute when you’re passionate.”

Noel’s eyes widen. “I am _not_ cute,” he exclaims, though his voice is not entirely offended.

“Right. Just hot, then.”

“I’m not sure if I take that as a compliment or not,” Noel squints one eye at Cody before he turns his gaze back to the road.

Cody lets out a laugh. “You should.”

He swears that Noel is blushing.

* * *

That night, they’re about to settle on the hood of the car when Noel points to the horizon, where the sky is pitch black from clouds.

“Lightning storm,” Cody swears as he hops off the car and starts gathering his stuff. “We have to get inside, now.”

They leave the car for what it is (Cody prays they won’t find it burned out tomorrow, though that’s nearly inevitable) and head into an abandoned gas station. Again, Cody prays that it’s actually abandoned.

Noel goes in first with his shotgun, Cody covering his back as they scout the place. “Sleeping outside is much safer,” Noel whispers.

“You want to get struck by fucking lightning?” Cody half whispers, half yells back. “You’re not gonna survive a lightning storm, you idiot!”

Noel just rolls his eyes. “Okay, you’re right. Fine.”

Once they clear the place and find it empty, they pick a spot in the back to sleep. Even through his jacket the ground is still cold and hard. Noel lays beside him, arms and thighs touching, and Cody listens to the thunder rumbling, in the distance at first but inching closer by the second. He’s a bit tense because of the storm, reminds him of things he doesn’t want to remember.

Barely five minutes after they’ve entered the gas station, the lightning storm reaches them with a loud clap of thunder. It reverberates through the walls, through the ground and through Cody’s chest.

“You feel that?” Noel asks, turning his head to look at Cody’s face.

He lets out a chuckle, nodding. “Guess we won’t be getting any sleep tonight if it keeps up like this.”

“I never really used to have lightning storms farther up north,” Noel says, looking back at the ceiling. “Only heard and saw them in the distance.”

“Were you alone, the four years you lived in the barn? I haven’t been able to stop wondering that,” Cody softly asks.

Noel chuckles, briefly glancing at him. “Really? Why?”

His cheeks redden slightly as he refuses to look directly at Noel. “Dunno. Didn’t it ever get lonely?”

Shrugging, he shifts into a more comfortable position, readjusting the backpack under his head. “Sometimes. But it was peaceful most of the time. You can’t lose anyone if you don’t have anyone around, y’know?” At Cody’s appalled expression, he lets out a breathy laugh. “But in all honesty, I just never ran into anyone so far up north. It was nice being on my own, anyway. Got to make lots of road trips without anyone complaining.”

“Hey!” Cody defends himself, getting up to his elbows. “I don’t complain _that_ much.”

Noel throws his hand up in defense, laughing loudly. “I wasn’t saying anything.”

In a wave of boldness, as Cody lays back down, he rests his head on Noel’s shoulder. He can feel Noel watching from the corner of his eye and Cody tenses up for a second, wondering if he made a mistake or crossed any invisible lines, but then Noel shuffles and presses his cheek against the top of his head.

“What’s the favorite road trip you’ve taken?” Cody asks softly, a flash of lightning illuminating the room for a split second before it turns dark again. Immediately after, thunder rumbles through the air.

Noel is quiet for a second. And then he starts talking.

* * *

When Cody wakes up the next morning, he realizes two things:

  1. He fell asleep midway through Noel’s story about the one time he went to an abandoned arcade (and tried to get one of the machines to work—Cody doesn’t know if he succeeded or not)
  2. He’s never before slept so peacefully through a lightning storm.



Noel’s arm has slipped around Cody’s shoulder, pulling him a little closer. Cody raises his head, wondering to himself what it means that he’s feeling so at peace around this man he’s barely known for a month.

Despite really wanting to stay here, so close to Noel that he can feel the warmth radiating through his clothes, it’s already light outside and they really should get going.

“Noel,” Cody whispers, carefully shaking his arm.

There’s a faint groan coming from his throat before he inhales deeply, automatically tightening his arm around Cody. Then he opens his eyes, seeming not at all bothered by their close proximity. “What?” He mumbles, voice still rough from sleep.

“Come on, we should get it going.”

“Yeah, we should,” Noel replies, closing his eyes again.

Wait, what? “Uh—that’s not really what I meant. Not in that way, at least, but, uh—”

“Shut up,” Noel mutters as he pulls Cody down and presses him into his side, “give me five more minutes.”

And, well… Cody can’t argue with that.

Five minutes turn into thirty before Noel finally wakes up. He doesn’t say anything about the cuddling so Cody doesn’t either, though he can feel the lingering stares on his back as he stuffs his jacket into his backpack.

Right as they’re about to leave, Noel spots a door with _maintenance_ in the back, half-hidden behind one of the shelves. Cody picks the lock with ease which make Noel’s eyes practically bulge out of his head and he revels in the shock, unable to wipe the smug smile off his face for minutes afterwards.

“No fucking way,” Cody states, arms crossed in front of his chest. “You have some weird superpower, man. It’s like you fucking attract luck.”

Noel shrugs casually, tapping against the monitoring panel. “Or it’s just actually using your eyes to look around.”

Cody rolls his eyes. “Yeah, like you run into a gas storage tank that’s still half-full on the daily.” Most storage tanks he’s seen at gas stations were emptied already, so he really stopped checking throughout the years. But they’re currently in the middle of nowhere (even Noel isn’t entirely sure what town they’re in) so it’s not that surprising that this particular gas tank still contains gas. “Okay, genius, how do we get the gas out of this huge fucking tank?”

Noel’s mouth twists into a smile. “Aw, you don’t have to flatter me like that. I know I’m in good shape but calling me a huge fucking—”

“God, you’re the worst,” Cody rolls his eyes again and pushes Noel out the maintenance door. “Just tell me so we can get the job done.”

Flinging his backpack on the floor, Noel kneels where they slept last night and starts rooting through his stuff until he pulls out a hose. Cody almost chokes on his own spit.

“You brought that along? Seriously?”

Noel cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah, because we can use it as a makeshift pump, you dumbass. This is why you let me do the packing,” he snorts as he gets up again, slinging his still-open backpack over his shoulder before marching outside. “The submersible pump won’t be working anymore because it runs on electricity,” he explains, scanning the terrain. “So we’re going to create our own suction pump to get the gas out.”

For a moment, Cody wonders how he ever survived without Noel. “And here I was thinking _I_ was good at physics.”

Noel waves him off, then abruptly points to a box on the ground. Too impatient to wait for Cody to lockpick it, he smashes the lock and kicks off the lid. “The tanks always have a vent pipe and a pipe to gauge the inventory manually. That’s how we get the gas.”

He continues rambling about leak detectors and monitoring wells and other shit Cody doesn’t understand a word of, so instead he helps as good as he can and follows up whatever orders he gets. There are a bunch of empty gallons inside that he retrieves and helps fill up.

It’s been an hour when they finally sit down their jeep (which was, surprisingly enough, not struck by lightning last night, thank fuck).

“I think we can actually make almost the entire trip now,” Noel remarks as he glances to the trunk, now completely filled with gallons.

“No more walking?” Cody asks hopefully, thinking of the blisters and the scorching sand and the intense heat of the sun.

Noel laughs as he starts the car. “Barely,” he promises. “I just hope this jeep will last that long.”

And if not, well… Noel can hotwire a car.

Cody feels more hopeful than he has in years.

* * *

“What do you think your life would’ve been like if the world hadn’t gone to shit?” Noel asks one night.

They’re lying in the backseat of a convertible, the jeep parked a few feet away. The sun has almost set, the last inches of golden-blue sky slowly dissolving into a deep blue. It’s a clear night, the stars brighter than usual.

“I don’t know,” Cody replies honestly. He tries not to think of it too often, what his life could’ve been in a different scenario. It’s useless to get stuck on, anyway.

“Come on,” Noel turns his head to glance at him, “There’s gotta be something.”

Cody lets out a sigh, folding his arm under his head as his eyes track the stars. “I think,” he speaks up after a while, “that I would have gone to college. Go get a degree, and—”

“In what?”

He lets out a soft chuckle. “Not sure. I don’t really know what kind of degrees you could exactly get. But probably something with technology, or programming. I’m good at that,” he says, realizing his slip-up a beat too late. He hopes Noel can’t see the red creeping onto his cheeks.

“Yeah? How do you know?” Noel asks.

He shrugs in what he hopes is a casual manner. “Dunno. I just feel like I would be. I’m good at fixing radios, for example.”

Noel grins back at him, elbowing him in the side. “Asshole.”

“I think—no, I _hope_ I’d be living together with someone I’d love. Apartment in the city, doing things like going out for dinner or going to the movies.”

Beside him, Noel shifts slightly, the leather lining dipping. “With a girlfriend?”

It’s quiet for a moment before he clears his throat. “Or a boyfriend.”

Suddenly, it’s too hot in the car even if they’re lying in the open air, especially when Noel looks at him with a glaze in his eyes Cody can’t quite place.

“What about you?” He asks, desperate to switch the subject, or at least talk about anything else than what he just said.

Crossing his arms, Noel smiles up to the sky. “I’d have a dog.”

“That’s it?” The answer is so Noel-like that Cody can’t help but smile too.

He shrugs. “I don’t know what I’d be. There are many things I’d love to do, but I don’t know if I’d be any good at any of them.”

“Elaborate on that, please,” Cody says, thoughtlessly shuffling closer until his cheekbone is pressed against Noel’s shoulder.

He can feel as Noel breathes in and out. Eventually, his reply comes, “Dancing.”

“Dancing?” Cody looks up to him, catching his gaze and raising a brow.

Noel rolls his eyes. “No, I’m not going to dance for you. I wouldn’t ever do it professionally, but it’s fun. Brings me joy in this cold, miserable world,” he states dramatically.

“Oh, boo-hoo. Like life is so insanely bad right now.”

He fails to suppress a smile. “Yes, it is, actually. You stink. We gotta find a place to shower soon or my eyes are going to permanently water whenever you’re around.”

“Fuck you,” Cody shoots back, then instantly adds, “I’ll take a shower if you dance for me.”

Noel flashes him a smirk. “Nice try, pretty boy.”

Cody pretends that doesn’t make his heart skip a beat and settles against Noel’s shoulder again. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll find a way to get you to pull out the moves. Just you wait.”

“We’ll see about that,” Noel says, looking back up to the sky. Cody follows his gaze.

“I love the stars,” Cody whispers after a few minutes of silence.

Noel narrows his eyes a little. “Why?”

“They’re a constant,” he clarifies. “Always there. No matter how shitty everything is, no matter what fucked up things you did on a particular day, they’re still above, watching, listening. Sometimes I wish it could always be night, calm and quiet.” But he’s thankful it’s not. The cranks come out at night, too.

“You know anything about constellations?” Noel asks, giving him a sidelong glance.

He smiles. “I do, actually.”

“Will you tell me about them?” Noel asks hesitantly, staring at him.

If Cody could drown in Noel’s eyes, he would. That thought scares him as it clangs through his head, but not as much as it should.

He points to the sky, naming the first constellation that comes to mind.

“I can’t find it,” Noel complains after a while and Cody laughs, gently grabbing his chin and moving his head a bit farther to the right. When he loosens his grip to let go, Noel beats him to it and grabs his hand, intertwining their fingers. For a moment, Cody is unable to get out a coherent sentence.

Then he just lifts his other hands and points to the sky again.


	9. NOEL. Do-It-Yourself

There’s a huge mall they run into three days later. Noel knows they don’t necessarily need supplies but it’s been while since he’s seen a mall like this and he really just wants to go in, blood basically thrumming with excitement.

“You sure about this?” Cody asks once they’re standing in front of the shattered sliding doors, nervously looking around. Knowing what happened the last time Cody went in to a mall, Noel gets where he’s coming from.

“I saved your ass last time,” Noel remarks before he steps through the glass. The backpacks are still in the car, only the shotgun is slung over his shoulder. “I’ll save it again if I have to.”

Cody lets out a huff before he follows him inside.

It’s eerily quiet in the building, the glass crunching under Noel’s boots amplified by the echo. Sunlight streams in through the broken roof and shattered windows.

“This place looks like a fucking battlefield,” Cody says softly.

It does. It looks more ruined than other malls Noel has seen so far.

“Come on, let’s just look around for a bit. We can always head out if we think it’s unsafe.”

“It _is_ unsafe!” Cody hisses, one arm tightened around Noel’s bicep. Noel places his hand over Cody’s. “You know that.”

“Everything is unsafe these days, Cody. You gotta live a little. May the angels guard us, remember?” Noel replies, giving a reassuring squeeze with his hand. “I’m here.”

Cody stares at him for a few seconds, visibly contemplating whether to say something else, before he heaves a sigh and lets go of Noel’s arm, only to quickly intertwine their fingers. Noel can’t stop his lips from tugging upwards.

Some signs are still intact, others have letters hanging from a single nail in the wall, other signs have collapsed completely and are rendered unreadable. They pass an old Burger King (“If you start whistling that Dr Pepper tune again, I _will_ kill you.”), an ice cream shop and multiple clothing stores that they quickly enter. Noel finds a new jacket that fits him surprisingly well and doesn’t have any holes in the sleeves. It’s a deep blue with light-colored stitches, reminding him of the night sky.

Ever since Cody said he loves the stars, Noel views nighttime with a different outlook.

Nighttime was the worst time, in his eyes. Limited eyesight which makes you vulnerable, the temperature can drop extremely low, the crawlers come out of their hiding spots, not to even mention the nightmares.

Since that conversation, he sees it differently. Now he sees the serenity of it. He’s learned to appreciate the quiet it carries.

But maybe nighttime has stopped being the worst time because Cody sleeps by his side, always touching him one way or another, whether it’s an arm around his waist or a cheek pressed against his chest or a leg slung over his own.

He steals a glance at Cody as they walk across the mezzanine, Noel’s old jacket in his hands (Cody forbade him to leave it behind or throw it out, because “it might come in handy, you never know”).

“It looks really good on you,” Cody says thoughtfully. “Honestly, I think— _oh my god_ , a Radio Shack?” He stops dead in his tracks, Noel having no choice but to halt as well because they’re—still—holding hands. “Haven’t seen one of those in years,” he breathes.

Noel chuckles, eyes flickering to the store beside it. “You can go in, I’ll be there in a sec,” he says, pointing over his shoulder to the other store as he walks backwards. “Gotta check something first.”

“A bakery store?” Cody raises his brow, fingers tightening around Noel’s right before they can slip out of his grasp.

“Yes, a bakery store. I’ll be there in a split second!” Then he pulls his fingers free and spins on his heel.

The bakery store is dusty and definitely does not smell like fresh pastries like the slogan claims it does, but it’s not as destroyed as the other stores. There’s a trail of old, dried blood on the floor and Noel crinkles his nose.

He carefully steps over a shattered table, ruffling through the supplies on the shelves. There’s a package of something called fondant, which, by the looks of it, is probably just mold at this point, and Noel steps back, shaking his head.

He checks the back. Come on, they should have it, right? It’s a _bakery store_.

Flipping on his flashlight and holding it in his mouth to have both hands free, he roots through the drawers until he triumphantly pulls out a small box.

In that exact moment, a loud gasp comes from the room next to him.

Noel’s heart jumps in his throat. “Cody?” When he doesn’t get a reply, his mouth goes dry and he turns on his feet, racing out the store and making a sharp turn into the Radio Shack, almost slipping and barely able to hold on to the doorframe before he can eat shit.

He basically dives towards him when he spots Cody crouched in front of one of the aisles. “Are you okay?” He asks, voice shaky. “Are you hurt?”

Cody turns his head, eyes wide in wonder. “What? Yeah, I’m fine. Look at what I found!” He holds up an old Walkman.

Noel feels so relieved that he could cry and he puts a hand on Cody’s shoulder to lean on him. “Jesus Christ, man. I thought you fuckin’ died or something.”

“Oh, sorry about that,” Cody says sheepishly. “Just got really excited about this. Found it shoved underneath one of the shelves, and it seems to be mostly intact.”

“We can probably fix it, then.” They still have some old electronics laying in the car.

“That’s what I thought,” Cody says, a smile on his face that makes Noel’s heart skip a beat, “I mean, how—”

Noel presses a hand over Cody’s mouth, shutting him up instantly. His eyes widen. “Did you hear that?”

Cody’s eyes grow to the size of dinner plates as he pries Noel’s hands off his face. “Hear what?”

Grabbing his hand, he pulls Cody to his feet. “We should go.”

“Good idea,” Cody breathes as he follows Noel out of the store.

They’re walking across the mezzanine when Noel hears it again; the crunching of glass. This time Cody seems to hear it too.

“There,” Cody whispers, pointing to the other side of the balcony.

A single figure is standing in the glass, partially covered by darkness. The bloodshot eyes and ripped clothes root Noel to the spot as images flood his mind—his mom standing in the middle of the room with her back towards him, her blue jeans ripped at the thigh to reveal a red-and-greenish mark, black veins around it that reminded him of lightning. Him barely being awake and not being able to see in the dark of the night, asking his mom if she was okay. The sounds she made that were far from human.

“Noel?”

He snaps out of it, swallowing and forcing the thoughts away. “It’s only one. Come on, we gotta get out of here before it calls its friends.”

Clenching Cody’s hands as if it’s the only thing that keeps him chained to the earth, they rush down the broken escalators and towards the exit.

The crawler turns at the sound, head tilting inquisitively, before it lets out something between a roar and a cry and moves after them.

They’re already outside before it can reach them, the sunlight welcoming and safe for once. Slightly panting, they watch as it stands at the edge of the shade.

“I know it won’t come after us, but it still gives me the creeps,” Cody murmurs, narrowing his eyes.

“Good,” Noel says. “You need to hold onto that fear. It keeps you sharp.”

“Need to hold onto the sun, too,” he mutters. “Thank God they’re too stupid to realize daylight won’t burn them, only fire will.”

They return to the car and Noel ruffles through their stuff to get the screwdrivers while Cody stalls out the Walkman on the hood of the car.

Cody hums to himself as he pries the thing open, coughing at the dust that comes out of it, and Noel is content with just watching as he wrestles with the wires and battery.

“Wish we were at home,” Cody mutters absent-mindedly at one point. “Too-large screwdrivers aren’t making this any easier.”

Cody is seemingly oblivious to what he just said, but Noel can’t fucking stop smiling for the rest of the day.

* * *

They’ve had about a third of the journey, and now that they’re going by car, they’re making a lot more miles than before.

Noel is the only one that drives since Cody never learned how to (“Wait, but how did _you_ learn how to drive?” “Trial and error, Cody.” That translates to; _I crashed about three cars before I got it right_ ). He doesn’t mind, really, driving gives him this sense of freedom that nothing else can seem to give him, and Cody usually stares at the landscapes flying past with parted lips, giving Noel the chance to steal brief glances whenever he feels like it. Honestly, it’s surprising he hasn’t grabbed Cody’s hand yet while driving because he wants to so badly, almost if he needs it as a reminder that Cody is actually there and not just some wonderful image he made up.

Today is different, because Cody has the Walkman clenched in his hands and he’s trying to fix something, but the road they’re speeding across isn’t exactly smooth.

Cody’s been complaining about not driving across the highway this entire morning, but there were too many abandoned cars blocking the entry. Noel had instead opted for a few faded countryside roads. They’re ahead of their ‘schedule’ anyways and if they keep this pace, they’ll reach El Pueblo by the end of next week.

“For fuck’s sake! Can we just stop, just for a minute? Please?” Cody sighs, dropping his hands to his lap, the Walkman almost crashing to his feet. “God!”

“He ain’t here,” Noel says, rolling his eyes at the dramatics but slowly pulling to a stop anyway.

Cody instantly hops out of the car, opening the trunk and pulling out a screwdriver. Noel stretches for a moment before walking over to him, watching as he fumbles with another wire.

“Right, it can—like this, it should work,” he says after two minutes, flipping the back onto it and twisting in the screws.

“Now we just need to find a cassette to try it out,” Noel declares, squeezing Cody’s shoulder at the slightly disappointed look that crosses his face. “Don’t worry, we’ll find another mall, okay?” Cody raises his gaze to his and nods, a careful smile breaking through. Noel frowns. “Hey, do you hear that—”

As one, they turn to the right.

Cody pushes himself off the car and walks over to the hill blocking their view to the rest of the scorched landscape. Noel follows suit. “What in God’s name—”

“A train,” Noel breathes, barely able to believe his eyes. He looks to Cody, who doesn’t seem nearly as fazed as him. “Am I hallucinating?”

Cody lets out a soft laugh, a surprised expression crossing his face. “No. You’re not hallucinating.”

The high-speed train thunders over the rails, getting closer and closer. Noel’s mouth hangs wide open, he just can’t help it. “I—I didn’t know trains still existed, let alone _worked_.”

“Oh, they work,” Cody says, pulling Noel back a little. “We have to be careful, though. If anyone sees us…” he trails off.

Noel’s eyes flicker to Cody before he looks back at the train. “It’s from _them_?” When Cody nods, he takes another step back. Of course it’s theirs—they’re the only ones with access to such advanced technology these days—but it still disappoints him a little. “What do you think is in it?”

It’s quiet for a moment, save for the rumble of the train. “Kids. Immunes. Supplies,” Cody softly answers.

Faster than expected, the convoy is out of sight, barely a black dot on the horizon before it seems to vanish. Noel feels almost defeated as he thinks of the innocent people it contained.

Cody grabs his hand and squeezes tightly. “Come on. We should go, yeah?”

They drive in silence for a large part of the afternoon, Noel both in awe of the train and its mechanism and in disgust about what it’s used for. He doesn’t think about how little it seemed to faze Cody.

Even when he should.

* * *

The closer they get to the sea, the more green seeps into the landscape. It started off with a few leaves on a plant, then to an actual tree, and it’s come so far as to seeing a patch of grass. _Grass_. (“What in the _fuck_ ,” Cody had said, eyes crinkled in joy, “I have the intense urge to roll around in it.” “Don’t,” Noel had replied).

Four days pass. They drive through a ghost town where it’s so eerily quiet that they choose not to raid any stores. On the fifth day, Cody sticks his head out the window like he sometimes does out of impulse, and when he drops back in his seat he’s laughing.

“I can smell the ocean!” He yells, hair blown in all different directions, “The motherfucking ocean still exists!”

In all honesty, it wouldn’t have surprised Noel if the ocean had somehow ceased to exist. He’s just glad it hasn’t.

A few hours before the sun sets, they reach a large town but decide to keep to the outskirts. Cities and towns are like hives for crawlers.

“What—” is all Cody gets out when they drive past a huge warehouse, the blue paint flaking right off the exterior.

“I haven’t seen one of these since I was nine,” Noel exclaims as he hits the brake. “Should we go inside?”

Cody rolls his eyes. “Seriously? You wanna go in?”

Noel shrugs, the corners of his mouth tugging up. “Come on, it’ll be fun. We stick to the windows, I have my shotgun. _You_ even have a gun.”

Shifting in his seat, Cody raises a brow. “What exactly do we need from an old _ikea?_ You plan on assembling a drawer?”

“You’re a killjoy, you know that?” He rolls his eyes. “We can see if they have any mattresses inside! Don’t you wanna sleep in a real bed for one night?”

“I’m _not_ sleeping inside that building.” Cody crosses his arms.

“So we drag the mattress outside.” Noel pries one of Cody’s hands away and holds it between his own, sticking out his lower lip. “Please? I promise I won’t put you in any danger and that we’ll leave as soon as you want.”

After a thirty second stare-off, Cody huffs out a breath. “Fine.”

“Great!” Noel jumps out of the car, sprinting around it to open the door for Cody.

They’ve barely made it all of three steps inside before Cody stops walking and states, “I wanna leave.”

“Jesus Christ.” Noel throws his head back, groaning loudly before taking his hand. “Five minutes, okay? That’s all we’ll need.”

As promised, they stick to the windows if there are any. Noel knows they’ll need to hurry up if they want to make it outside before the sun has completely set, so he has a flashlight in his hand and Cody’s hand in the other, the shotgun slung over his shoulder, as it usually is these days when they’re not driving.

They walk past different sections, skipping all of them until they reach the warehouse, scanning the huge shelves that are at least four times Noel’s size.

“There,” Cody points.

Noel scans over the area with his light first before they walk over, staring at the mostly intact roll-packed mattresses.

“Aw, they’re rolled up like lil’ burritos,” Cody remarks and it comes so unexpected that Noel lets out a loud laugh, immediately slapping his hand over of his mouth and hoping furiously he didn’t just awake all the crawlers inside.

“Just shut up next time, will you?” Noel retorts, though he’s not actually mad. “Alright, take your pick,” he continues, gesturing to the barely readable signs above the mattresses.

Cody glances at Noel before shaking his head as he chuckles to himself, then points to the sign that reads _soft_. “Been sleeping on the ground for so long. I think we deserve this for once.”

“Jesus Christ, this thing is _heavy_ ,” Noel mutters when he tries to lift the damn thing and Cody laughs as he stands to the side. “A little help would be appreciated, you know.”

Cursing under his breath, Cody helps lift it, plastic almost ripping in the process and this time it’s Noel who laughs because _I told you this fucker wasn’t light_. It’s a miracle, really, how they almost manage to make it to the exit without alerting any flared.

But it was bound to happen, Noel thinks to himself as he hears a strangled, animalistic cry echoing through the warehouse. Cody freezes on the spot, eyes widening.

“Cody? Hey, we gotta go. Before they block the exit,” Noel urges, jerking his chin to the shattered double doors, freedom lying just ahead. “Cody!”

He snaps out of it, feet moving on auto-pilot.

If they look like total fucking idiots, running for their lives with a roll-packed mattress in between them, Noel considers himself the luckiest idiot alive for being able to do stupid shit like this with _Cody_.

When they make it to the jeep, Noel is laughing so hard that he collapses on the ground. Even Cody, who barely has any breath left to laugh, has to lean against the car in order not to fall over.

“Let’s just agree not to do that again,” Noel says once he’s caught his breath.

Cody’s head snaps up, eyes widening in offense. “I never agreed to this in the first place!” he calls out.

He looks so pretty that Noel’s heart is full of it. All he thinks is that he could kiss him right now—hell, he _wants_ to. The thought rings through his head, so loud that it leaves an echo, but it doesn’t scare him. Not as much as it should. Not anymore.

“Okay, genius, now where do we put the mattress so we don’t get fucking eaten by crawlers in the middle of the night?”

Noel turns to the building next to the ikea, probably another store, and points to the fire escape. “The roof.”

Cody merely groans in answer.

He still helps drag the damn mattress up the stairs, of course. It goes accompanied with a lot of complaining and a lot of cursing, and then also a lot of laughing. They make it right on time to watch the sun disappear beneath the horizon.

And it’s a surreal feeling, to lie on a fucking _mattress_ on some random roof, watching the sunset while Cody Kolodziejzyk lies next to him, a name he didn’t know last month and that has now turned into his entire world.

As the stars slowly make their appearance, Noel folds his hands behind his head and asks, “What do you miss most about the past?”

Cody settles next to him, knee touching Noel’s thigh. “A lot of things. The basics, of course, but that’s not what you mean, is it?”

Noel shakes his head.

“The smell of rain on a hot summer day. Rain in general, really,” Cody says after a long moment, voice soft and almost distant, as if his mind takes him to places he can’t physically reach. “Waking up by my dad mowing the lawn on a Sunday morning. Going to sleep the day before a field trip.” Even without looking at him, Noel can hear the smile in Cody’s voice. “Playing in the street with the neighbor’s kids in the summer, begging my mom to let me stay outside just a little bit longer.” Cody chuckles to himself at the memory, then turns to Noel. “What about you?”

“My mom’s fajitas,” he says without hesitation. “Hers were even better than my grandma’s, but I never dared to say that when she was around.” From the corner of his eye, he can feel Cody staring, something like wonder in his gaze. “Playing catch with my dad. Getting invited to my friends’ birthday parties. Even scraping my knees across the pavement when I fell from my skateboard.” Involuntarily, he smiles at the next thought. “My mom used to scold me, then she’d get me Sour Patch Kids from the store.”

The sky has turned into an endless sea of inky black above him, the stars swimming around in the void. He tries to spot the constellations Cody told him about, but ends up only finding the North Star.

After a few minutes of silence, he asks, “If there’s one thing you could change about the past, what would it be? As in things you have done or choices you’ve made.”

Cody raises a brow. “Rethinking our life choices, are we?” But at his silence, Cody gently squeezes his wrist and turns back to the sky, visibly contemplating his answer. He opens his mouth, then closes it. At last, he says, “I would’ve looked out for my sister more. I lost sight of her very early on, and—” He shakes his head, biting his lip. “Stupid.”

“I would’ve told my mom I loved her a million times more,” Noel says softly. “Hugged her a little tighter.”

He didn’t have the chance, back then. It slipped through his fingers long before he realized he’d even had it in the first place. Regret has been a steady companion of him for years now, walked by his side when he was alone, stuck with him through all the night spent in his attic.

Glancing at the man lying beside him, he has the chance right now. Because god dammit, he loves Cody. Whether he likes to admit it or not, _not a charity_ turned into _caring_ turned into _loving_. He didn’t know it was possible for him, didn’t know that love still existed in this scorched world.

But it’s here. And it’s right in front of him.

Cody looks up in question of Noel’s burning stare, opening his mouth to say something.

Noel kisses him before he has the chance to.

It takes Cody by surprise. He tenses for a moment before he places a hand on the back on Noel’s neck and pulls him closer.

The stars are watching from above, and Noel thanks each and every one of them for the gift that is Cody.


	10. CODY. Cathedrals

Cody feels like he’s been walking on clouds for the past two days.

It’s _Noel, Noel, Noel_ , he goes to sleep thinking about him and wakes up with him on still on his mind, feels the need to be close to him even if he’s already tangled in Noel’s arms. Soft breathing and a relaxed face and closed eyes is the sight he’s met with nearly every morning and it makes his heart tighten to the point of pain.

It’s intoxication and relief and joy and sorrow, the love he feels and the need to be near him at all times. Noel is all there is and all he knows. It’s dangerous. It’s freedom.

He wishes Devon and Sam could’ve met Noel. In the back of his mind, he prays that it’s still a possibility. It _is_ still a possibility, he tells himself. Devon and Sam are smart—they could’ve made their way out of the ruined camp and to the new rendezvous.

They pass through more towns, occasionally stopping when they feel like it’s necessary. The weather starts getting more unpredictable the closer they get to the ocean, and so does the landscape. There was one time they could see the sea, still miles away but unquestioningly there, a vast and endless strip of blue. They’d stood there in silence atop the hill, clutching each other’s hands, sharing the same expression and tightness in their chest. It's a gift to have Noel beside him, every step of the way. 

* * *

The wooden bench is digging into Cody’s back, but it’s okay because he’s lying in Noel’s arms, cheek pressed against his chest. Noel’s heartbeat is steady in his ear.

They spotted the cathedral when they passed through another town, the spires standing out against the bright blue sky. Unable to suppress his curiosity, Noel had dragged him inside, claiming that he just wanted to watch around for a bit, and it’d be too light for any crawlers to hide (and it wasn’t at all like he’d claimed earlier that he couldn’t “ _just drive the entire day with Cody sitting next to him looking like that, for fuck’s sake”_ ).

It’s mid-day, the sunlight falling in through the partially broken stained glass windows. So close to the ocean, there’s more vegetation, and in here, ivy grows on the ceiling, covering up parts of the paintings.

Cody’s eyes drift to the altar, where a broken statue hangs in pieces. He unintentionally lets out a laugh.

Noel throws his a questioning glance.

He shakes his head, pressing his head against Noel’s chest again. For a holy place, they just did some very unholy things. Knowing Noel, he probably chose this spot just to spite whoever’s up there, for the hell of it or simply to get a laugh out of it.

“I hate you,” Cody mumbles under his breath.

Noel pulls back a little, checking out Cody’s bare chest before his eyes flick to the pile of clothes on the ground a few feet away. “Sure looks like it.”

“Shut up,” he rolls his eyes, cheeks heating up. “This bench is uncomfortable,” he complains as he tries to change the subject.

“Turn around, then.” Noel gestures for him to spin on his other side, pulling him flush against his chest once he’s done so and wrapping his arms around his waist. “This better?”

Cody nods, looking around the cathedral again. A large part of the roof has collapsed, chunks of stone scattered across the ground, wooden benches fallen over, frames of paintings and ripped canvases lying near the walls. There’s beauty in the destruction, a serenity in the ruin.

Noel presses a kiss to the back of Cody’s neck. “What’s this scar?”

He freezes, just for a millisecond. “I—” he gets out, mind blanking on what he could possibly tell him. “I don’t—”

“Hey.” Noel’s arms tighten around his waist. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

But he should have. That’s the problem. Cody should just tell him. He deserves to know, he deserves the truth most of all, but Cody is just so scared to tell him. So scared to lose what he only just got.

Cody should say, _no, it’s okay, you have every right to know_ , but he doesn’t, instead he places his hand on top of Noel’s and intertwines their fingers, squeezing his eyes shut at the memories that involuntarily resurface.

After a minute, Noel loosens his grip and sits up. “I have a surprise. Well—uh, it’s… yeah—”

Cody sits up as well, crossing his legs as his eyes follow Noel, who pulls his backpack to him and starts rooting around it. With a glance over his shoulder, he orders, “Close your eyes.” When Cody raises a brow, he adds, “Please.”

There’s more shuffling, the sound of fabric rustling and something like a lighter clicking, and then— “Okay, you can look now.”

Well, whatever he was expecting, this isn’t it.

In his hands, Noel has an ivory-colored food, four lit birthday candles stuck into it. He’s wearing a broad grin as he tries to gauge Cody’s reaction. “Happy birthday, Cody Kolodziejzyk.”

Cody is speechless as his gaze flickers from the Noel’s face to the candles back to Noel’s face. “What—I—how?”

“No, you have to blow ‘em out first, idiot.”

“Is that a twinkie?” He asks, eyes widening. Do those things still exist?

“Yes! Now do it.”

He looks up to Noel, who nods fiercely, before hesitantly blowing out the candles. He stares at the wick, and then to his great horror, he starts tearing up. It’s his birthday (he didn’t even know) and Noel put effort into making it a celebration. Noel remembers and, most of all, he _cares_. Cody starts furiously wiping under his eyes, embarrassed at the tears.

Noel grabs his wrist, giving him a pointed look. “You just had my dick in your mouth. I think the least you can do is cry in front of me.”

Cody almost rolls his eyes at that—way to ruin the mood—but he’s just overwhelmed and his heart tightens in his chest. “I just—I don’t know what to say, Noel—I can’t believe you got candles and a twinkie—”

“I wouldn’t eat it, though. Might taste a bit stale.”

Finally, Cody cracks a smile, leaning his forehead against Noel’s shoulder as he laughs. “Shut up, man. You’re ruining the moment.” After a second, he adds, “I can’t believe that you—

Noel raises a brow. “Your expectations of me are that low?”

Cody takes Noel’s face in both hands. “Will you just let me thank you, for god’s sake?” Then he kisses Noel, lips brushing over his softly at first, until Cody’s hands move to his shoulders and pull him closer. There’s the neediness again, his heart’s demand to have Noel close and then even closer, the want to feel skin on skin and soft breaths and a heartbeat thumping underneath his hand.

As Noel pushes him back on the church bench (the irony isn’t lost on him), the cold wood making him shiver, he realizes how naturally it comes to him to love Noel.

Every time he looks at Noel, he can see a bit clearer, like a fog has slowly lifted from his mind. And whenever Noel looks at him, it is like being seen after a lifetime of darkness, seeing the sun after endless night, taking a breath after being held underwater for eternity.

Since that day where Noel saved his life, his love has grown systematically, a little bigger each day, and now his heart is full and he feels complete in ways he’s never felt before. For the first time in years, he feels like himself again.

They make out until Cody is so out of breath he fears he might get an asthma attack.

“You don’t even have asthma,” Noel huffs out as he turns on his back, forcing himself in the cramped space between Cody and the backrest of the bench, wrapping one arm around his shoulder and pressing him closer to his side.

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” Noel states, shrugging.

Cody rolls his eyes and stares up at the ceiling, trailing the vines of ivy and the paintings under them. After a few minutes of silence, he asks, “How do you know it’s my birthday? I didn’t even know myself.”

Noel gives him a long, suggestive look before he pulls out something else from his backpack. It’s a worn, leather-bound journal, tied together with a small piece of rope.

“A journal?”

“Yep,” Noel confirms, freeing his arm to flip it open. “Been keeping this since I got it from my mom, shortly after the virus broke out. Some days, if I feel like it, I write something down, other days I simply write the date. That’s how I keep track of time.”

“You write in it _every day?_ ” Cody asks incredulously. When Noel nods, he shakes his head. “Impossible. How come I’ve never, not _once_ , seen that journal, let alone see you write in it?”

Noel shrugs, the hint of a smirk on his face. “Maybe you should just pay more attention.”

"Wait, but—how do you know that my birthday is November 22?" 

He clears his throat. "Your dog tag. I saw it when you were passed out in the attic, bleeding all over my bed, might I add." 

A retort dies on Cody's tongue as he sees a few pages, filled completely with the same scrappy handwriting in black ink. “What do you write about?”

For the first time since he’s met Noel, he actually seems flustered.

“Well,” he starts, “I usually write it down if something specific happened on that day, or memories. But it’s mostly poems and other lines I read whenever I find books.”

“Will you read some to me?” Cody asks, Noel’s skin warm as he rests his cheek on his chest. “Please?”

Noel takes one look at Cody’s hopeful face, then turns away and lets out an annoyed huff. He flips through the journal, and occasionally ripped pages from other books fall out, the parchment folded and discolored.

“ _‘And when your heart knows, it knows. There’s no explaining it. You can only trust it.’_ ” Noel refuses to meet Cody’s gaze, voice soft and almost hesitant. Cody listens to the rustling of paper as Noel flips further, eyes trained on his face while he does.

He is so breathtakingly beautiful that Cody’s heart sometimes feels like it could burst.

“This is from a letter I read in a history book. Can’t remember from who to who it was written, though,” Noel clarifies before he continues, “ _‘I wish, my Dear Laurens, it were in my power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you.’_ ”

Noel skims a few more pages until the corners of his mouth tug up and he looks directly at Cody. _“‘Now that I know you exist, how do I not love you?’”_

They share a long look. Then Cody takes the journal out of Noel’s hand, tosses it on the bench and slings one leg over Noel’s side, climbing on his lap until he’s straddling him.

Something in Noel’s gaze changes, like a flip being switched. He watches Cody with an almost cocky expression.

“I never knew you were such a romantic,” Cody breathes, leaning forward until his mouth is mere inches away from Noel’s. “I can think of a few ways to convince you that I love you. By actions, rather than words.”

In the quiet of the cathedral, he does.

* * *

With the weather getting more unpredictable the closer they get to the sea, it’s almost inevitable that freak lightning storms come to taunt them as well. Sometimes around sunset, or mid-day, but other times they appear in the dead of the night and they’ll have to sprint to the nearest building while trying not to stumble over their own feet.

It’s after a particular rough lightning storm that they find the jeep burned out—the tires are flat and nearly every electrical or electronic part is torched. It’s a surprise that the entire car didn’t go up in flames with the fuel still stored in the trunk, but with no other cars in sight and no wish to break their back carrying the gallons, they have no other choice than to walk.

“We’re about here,” Noel tells him, pointing to the map. “I estimate it’ll take around four days to get here.” He drags his finger to the dot that resembles Los Angeles.

It doesn’t hit Cody until that moment that they’re this close to the rendezvous. Four more days and then he’ll be able to start over, away from this wrenched continent and away from the Killzone Department, but with Noel by his side.

Still, he can’t get rid of the feeling in his heart that it can’t have been this easy, because it’s never been for him, it’s been a struggle and a fight since day fucking one, and he knows he should have told Noel the truth when he had the chance.

But this close to the safe haven, so little miles left between them and freedom, the thoughts vanish as soon as they appeared.

And as Noel takes his hand while they walk, flashing him a smile, he’s never been so happy to be alive.


	11. NOEL. Regression to the mean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh shit.

“I have a surprise for you,” Noel says.

They’ve been walking all day and just now settled underneath a half-collapsed wall that shields them from the wind, the moon slowly rising in the sky.

“More surprises?” Cody raises his brows.

“I know,” Noel drawls. “I’m simply the gift that keeps on giving.” He digs through his backpack, then holds up a dusty cassette.

Cody’s eyes widen and he inches forward, taking it out of Noel’s hands. “No way. You found a cassette?”

“No, this is fake.” He rolls his eyes. “Yes, I found one! Now get that stereo player out so we can see if you fixed it properly.”

“What songs are on it?” Cody asks, pulling his backpack and zipping it open.

Noel shrugs, taking the case and turning it over. “The handwriting is faded, so I’m not sure. I think it might be _Prince_. That’s the only readable part of it.”

He holds his breath as Cody puts in the cassette tape and pushes on a few buttons, then hits play. For a moment, it’s quiet, and then—

Soft music comes from the speakers, the sound a bit scratchy but it’s _music_ and Noel chokes out a laugh.

He faintly recognizes the melody. It’s indeed a song by Prince, one that his dad used to play after they’d had dinner, and his dad would pull his mom from her chair and dance with her in the living room, twirling her in circles until she got dizzy, and she’d always smile so bright.

“You’re gonna have to pull out the moves for this one, big boy,” Cody says with a smile, “You promised me.”

Noel gets to his feet and throws Cody a smug glance before he listens to the music, really _listens_ to it, and dances. It’s ridiculous, because his feet get stuck in the sand and he’s a shit dancer, but Cody throws his head back and laughs loudly and Noel thinks there might not be a melody more beautiful than that, so he doesn’t really care.

The song ends. It’s quiet for a moment before a slow beat comes from the speakers and Noel pulls Cody to his feet. “Dance with me?”

Cody looks tempted to say no, but to Noel’s surprise, he shrugs. “Okay.”

So they dance in the darkness, the stars looking over them as they always do, and Noel’s heart sings.

* * *

Regression to the mean is a term Noel once read about in a book about philosophy. He’d found the book in a small store that wasn’t entirely destroyed yet and he’d been intrigued by the few pages he’d skimmed, so he had taken it home with him to the shed.

Now _regression to the mean_ is written on a page in his journal, with an explanation and his thoughts on it. It’s a term often used in statistics, discovered by some British guy named Galton, and in all honesty, Noel didn’t understand a word of the definition and illustration. There was, however, one part that put the phenomenon in the perspective of real life, and the meaning was something that resounded with him; no matter how bad things get or how good things get, they always come back to the middle.

Things will always even out.

He’s been on a high ever since kissing Cody, and every day at his side, that high has been building up. But he’s being carried by the momentum, and the higher you get, the harder you fall.

 _Things will always even out_. The universe demands balance.

Noel just really, really wished it wouldn’t have.

* * *

Two more days until they reach El Pueblo. Noel’s a little nervous, if he’s honest, and Cody has been off, only a little, but Noel has spent the past two months with him so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he notices.

They keep the radio turned on as often as possible, listening for any activity and finding close to none.

The stereo player is on non-stop too, playing the same eight songs over and over. The debate over which songs and which artists are on it keeps them busy while they walk. So far they’ve established that two of the songs are from Prince; one song is from Bonnie Tyler; one from Queen which Noel disagrees with because the seventh track is obviously from Queen too (“Maybe you got a hearing impairment, then” is what Cody tells him before he presses a kiss on his cheek); there’s one track from Fleetwood Mac; another track from Kiss, and then there’s two undecided tracks left.

It doesn’t really matter, anyway, but it fills the time as they walk, and walk, and walk, and sometimes make out underneath half-collapsed buildings, finding cover from the burning sun. It’s not his fault—he just can’t help himself when Cody hums along to the songs, readjusting a blue cap he found yesterday, looking around at the world like it’s the first time he’s seeing it. So. It’s not Noel’s fault that his heart speeds up every time he glances at Cody. He’s not taking the blame for the extended breaks throughout the day either, from which they both emerge panting and sweaty and flustered.

They’re on another break, surprise surprise, and Cody presses a kiss to Noel’s collarbone as he chuckles. The laugh reverberates through Noel’s chest, making him smile even wider than he already was, and he lifts Cody’s chin with his fingers, hastily kissing his lips.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough of this.

Briefly, he wonders what it’ll be like in the safe haven—Paradise, they dubbed it, without knowing if it’ll be anything like paradise, but Cody is by his side and really, that’s already more than he could ever ask for.

He’s so caught up in making out that he doesn’t hear the scuffling until it’s too late.

One minute his lips are brushing past Cody’s, the next there’s a torn scream coming from Cody’s mouth as he’s dragged backwards, into the darkness.

Noel is rooted to the spot as another scream tears right through his heart.

Next to him, a figure comes lashing out of the shadows. Noel turns on his feet, trying to get away and tripping. His teeth sing as he slams onto the floor, a scrawny hand wrapping around his ankle igniting ice cold terror in his stomach. His shotgun is next to his backpack, too far away from him to grab, so he reaches for the first thing within his grasp—a wooden bat, splinters from the handle digging in his hand as he closes his palm around it. There’s a loud crunch when he hits the _thing_ —crawler, infected, crank, it’s all the same—and he staggers to his feet, lungs burning. The crawler doesn’t get up. He stares at it for a second, feeling like he’s about to throw up any minute.

_“NOEL!”_

Then he moves, heart pounding so loud in his ears that he can barely think over the sound as he snatches up his shotgun and cocks it. _Aim. Breathe in, breathe out. Pull the trigger._

The shot rings through the air, and Cody topples forward. Noel catches him before he falls face-first on the concrete.

“You’re okay,” Noel breathes, throat dry and legs feeling like jelly. His hand presses on the back of Cody’s head as he holds him close.

Cody is panting, gripping Noel’s midnight blue jacket in his fists. His eyes are wide in shock.

“You’re okay,” Noel whispers again. He’s not sure who he’s trying to convince.

He doesn’t realize there’s blood on his hands until Cody shifts after a long moment, instantly hissing out a breath and face scrunching up in pain.

“What is it?” Noel instantly says, lifting a hand and seeing the blood it’s covered in. _No_.

Cody turns, eyes full of tears, a fearful expression on his face and he tilts his head to the side, carefully tugging his shirt aside to reveal teeth-marks on his shoulder.

“No, no—” This isn’t happening. It’s not happening. Noel’s mind drives him back to the past, to his mother with a bitemark on her leg, to his dad with a gaping scratch on his stomach, both dying while alive, both slowly losing their minds until Noel put a stop to it—put a stop to _them_ —

“Noel,” Cody says, covering up his shoulder and reaching for Noel’s arm.

“This—you can’t—” He’s panting. A friend he made the months before he moved into the shed. Brown eyes wide, the nonsense she’d started muttering as she tried to hide the bite, the stench of blood she couldn’t conceal, the blind terror he’d felt when he found out, the way his heart ached as she begged him to end it—

“Noel.” Cody grabs his face in both hands, trying not to grimace in pain, forcing him to look at him. “I—I’m immune.”

“What?”

“I’ve been bitten before,” he says, something like guilt in his eyes. “I’ve been bitten before, and I didn’t get sick. I didn’t go insane.”

Noel stares at him for a few long moments. “I thought all immunes were taken by the Department.” Cody shifts his gaze to their hands. “How—how is that possible? It just heals?”

He nods. “It does. I don’t know how, Noel, I just—God, I’m so sorry,” he breathes, leaning his forehead against Noel’s arm.

Noel lets out a relieved laugh, though this whole situation isn’t funny at all. He’s just going to sit down for a few more minutes, because his legs are still trembling and he’s pretty sure he’ll just collapse on the floor if he tries to get up. “What the hell are you sorry for?” He intertwines their fingers, heart still racing in his chest. “Surviving?”

Just the thought of losing Cody makes him nauseous.

“Surviving what billions of people didn’t,” Cody says quietly, head still leaning against his arm.

“That’s not something you could have done something about. Neither is being immune.”

Cody glances up to him, eyes glistening with unshed tears.

“You’re okay,” Noel whispers again. _He’s okay_.

* * *

The wooden bat is not left behind when they leave.

“You need a weapon, too,” is what Noel says after he’s bandaged the bitemark on Cody’s shoulder.

“I have a _gun_.”

“You need a weapon that you’ll actually use,” Noel amends, “now we just need a handful of nails and a hammer.”

Cody shakes his head but smiles, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s still shaken by what happened earlier, and well, so is Noel.

They’re walking in silence, the pavement hot and sticky underneath Noel’s feet. His mind is still racing, still going over every move and mistake he made. It had been midday when it happened, and he just feels foolish for letting himself get so distracted that he hadn’t heard them approach.

He’s still thinking about the memories it had made resurface, about his parents, about his friends, about the countless other people he’s seen die in front of him, if not by his hands. And no matter how hard they were begging for it by the end, it still hurts, still hurts that he pulled the trigger on them, it still hurts that he was the one to release them of their suffering.

“Do you think they’re ever going to find a cure?” Noel asks after what feels like hours of silence.

Cody looks up, visibly disoriented after being pulled out of his own bubble. He thinks for a moment, one strap of his backpack clenched in his hand so it doesn’t press on his shoulder. “I think the chance is there. It might take months, it might take years and even decades, but… they were close. Closer, at least.”

“Even if they find a cure, don’t think they’ll share it with us,” Noel scoffs.

Cody already looks lost in thought again, so Noel doesn’t ask how, exactly, he knows how they were close to finding a cure. Instead, he shuts his mouth and listens to the quiet except for the scuffing of feet across the sandy pavement and the occasional breeze blowing past.

He thinks about the Killzone Department, taking all immunes, at first only kids but eventually everyone with the antibodies in their blood. Everyone except for Cody.

He thinks about how unfazed Cody was by the train when it was literally plot twist of the century for him. He thinks about the night they talked about futures in a different present, about how Cody claimed to be good with technology and programming. He thinks about how certain Cody was that the rebellion existed—he hadn’t just suspected for them to exist, he _knew_ it.

He thinks of how little he knows of Cody before he met him—his past, his family, his story. How did he get where he is today?

His journal is burning holes in his pocket. Regression to the mean. He can picture the exact page it’s written on, the exact handwriting in which he wrote it, the dog-eared corner.

All of a sudden, he can’t let it go. How well does he actually know Cody?

“You’ve been quiet,” Cody remarks as they set up camp a few hours later in a building at the edge of the city. Twilight tints the sky soft hues of pink and purple, the hills in front of them glowing in the faint sunlight. It won’t be long before they reach the rendezvous. 

“Yeah, just shaken,” Noel tells him quietly, kneeling at Cody’s side and peeling off the bandage on his shoulder. His hand brushes past Cody’s neck. “I—”

He stares at the scar, a thin white mark against the tanned skin on his neck. The almost-completely faded ink above it. Noel freezes as realization dawns on him.

“You okay—” Cody turns, frowning when he sees Noel’s face.

Noel’s gaze snaps to his. “You worked for them, didn’t you?”

Cody’s expression falls and he fails to hide it. “What are you talking about?”

His mistake—he doesn’t outright deny it. Noel drops the scissors he’s holding and shuffles backwards, away from Cody, away from the dreadful realization that just dawned on him— “You worked for the Killzone Department?” His voice is barely a whisper.

Cody shakes his head, eyes glassy and expression distraught.

“Deny it, then,” Noel pleads. “Deny it.”

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t because it’s the truth.

Noel’s heart sinks and shatters into a million pieces on the floor.

He’s already glancing to his backpack, calculating how fast he can grab it and bolt to the nearest exit. He can feel old instincts starting to kick in, the fight-or-flight-mode, the switch from living to surviving.

“You have to let me explain,” Cody says, eyes pleading. “Please. You have every right to be angry, just—just let me explain, _please_.”

Noel is so tempted to grab his shit and walk out of here. Leave Cody behind and forget any of this ever happened. How could he have been so stupid, so blind? But a part of him wants Cody to prove him wrong, wants to make it to the rendezvous with him and hold his hand as they start a new life together. With his mind in conflict, he states, “You have two minutes.”

“I worked for the Killzone Department,” Cody says defeatedly. The air leaves Noel’s lungs as if he’s been punched in the stomach. “They took me and my sister when I was eleven, after they found out we were immune. They kept us safe, gave us food and shelter and a bed to sleep in, and in return we had to work for them. It felt like a fair trade,” he continues, dragging a hand under his nose, refusing to meet Noel’s stare. “They treated us well, enrolled me in their engineering wing. When I was fourteen, they wouldn’t let me see my sister anymore. Just—one day, randomly, I couldn’t see her anymore. They wouldn’t tell me why, or if anything had happened to her. _Keep working_ , they said _, it’s going to be alright_.”

Cody stares at the ground for a moment. Noel hates how badly he wants to wipe away the tears leaving tracks on his cheeks.

“You don’t really have a choice but to take their word for it. You’re alone and scared, and you’re doing it to find a cure, right? That’s what we were doing. And I wasn’t proud of the things we had to do, but I was doing it for my parents and the friends I’d already lost to the virus. But then—then I found out what they’d done to my sister, and—I couldn’t—” His voice breaks. He inhales deeply before locking eyes with Noel. “I left as soon as I found a way out. You have every right to be angry, you have every right to scream and cry and curse, but don’t think I enjoyed what I had to do, Noel. I hated it, every second I was in that damned facility.”

Noel is quiet. He doesn’t have the words, and if he did have them, he’s not sure whether he’d even want to say them.

At his deafening silence, Cody gets to his feet, taking a cautious step towards him. “I—”

Noel staggers backwards. Hurt flashes in Cody’s eyes. “I just—I need to think, okay? I need to be alone,” he says, averting his gaze as he stalks past Cody and takes his backpack from the floor.

Right before he walks out, Cody’s voice cuts through the tense silence. “Are you leaving me?” Those words alone make Noel’s heart clench in his chest.

He glances over his shoulder. “I just need to sort this out, okay?” Then he turns on his feet and disappears into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave a comment <3


	12. NOEL. Come back home (AFTER)

According to Noel’s watch, it’s three in the morning, but it’s rather difficult to make it out in the darkness.

He’s angry and sad and heartbroken and in love, he’s feeling a million things at once and he’s pretty sure it’s messing with his head. He kicks at the rocks as he walks across a sandy path, gravel crunching under his feet.

Most of all, he’s confused.

He wants to scream. Or cry. Preferably both.

His flashlight is still lying next to Cody’s backpack, so he trudges blindly through the dark and has resorted to just hoping he won’t eat shit. At least he’s got his shotgun. Apparently, the shotgun has been his only steady companion for the past years. Along with regret. And god dammit if he doesn’t regret a bunch of fucking shit right now.

Noel walks for an hour, but with little to no sleep he’s more tired than he previously thought. He finds a building with a fire escape and drops on the roof minutes later, sitting against the bricks that house the generator.

He wishes now more than ever that his mother was here, arm wrapped around his shoulder, hand brushing over his hair, whispering words of wisdom and trying to cheer him up. He wishes it so bad that it hurts.

But his mom isn’t here. He’s going to have to make a decision by himself.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes to himself, pushing his palms against his eyes. This whole situation is so messed up. He said he was going to sort his thoughts, but he doesn’t even know where to _begin_.

Cody lied. He kept something vital from Noel, and perhaps that’s what hurts the most. He worked for the Department, worst of all, the very people who took his sister and tore apart his family.

If he’s being rational, neither of those things are Cody’s fault. Cody isn’t the one who took his sister—hell, he lost his own.

_“If there’s one thing you could change about the past, what would it be?”_

_“I would’ve looked out for my sister more.”_

If he’d been in Cody’s situation, wouldn’t he have done the same? Wouldn’t he have gone with his sister if he’d had the choice?

The first years he spent alone in the scorch—he wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. He would’ve killed for a bed to sleep in and a decent meal, to have a semblance of safety. And it hurts that Cody kept it from him, but would he have told the truth if he was in Cody’s shoes?

The sky starts to unravel at the edges, a lighter shade of blue fading the harshness of the dark. The stars look down at Noel expectantly.

He thinks about the past weeks with Cody. How this strange, unknown idiot ran into his life one day and changed everything within the blink of an eye. He thinks of the conversations, the banter, the laughs, he thinks of the endless journey ahead of him that suddenly hadn’t seemed so endless anymore, he thinks of the nights spent talking, he thinks of every single time his heart jumped when he glanced at Cody.

Noel is angry—rightfully so—but he still loves Cody.

Now the only question that remains is, can he forgive him?

He think of every moment of intimacy they shared, kissing, holding hands, but hugging him tight when Cody woke up crying and letting him get held after the continuous nightmares, too.

There’s so much more to life than holding grudges and seeking revenge. Already, he can feel the absence of Cody by his side. He misses the way he laughs after Noel tells a joke, even if it’s a bad one (though he’ll deny ever making a bad joke). He misses the soft snoring and the steady breathing and the callused skin on his fingertips. He doesn’t think he can just go and continue living a life without Cody.

And there’s his answer.

Yes—he can forgive Cody. He already knew that the moment he walked out, in the back of his mind, buried and hidden in a nook of things that hurt whenever you poke at it.

It will take time. God, he knows it’ll take time, but he’s willing to work for it, he’s willing to fight for a future with Cody in it.

It will hurt. It hurts right now, but it’ll fade—the pain, the lies, the deceit.

The harder the rain, the sweeter the sun.

* * *

Noel awakes with a jolt and squints his eyes against the brightness of the sun, his hand flying up to his face to cover his face. Shit, what time is it?

He must’ve fallen asleep, because the last thing he remembers is staring at the fading stars and the constantly changing shades of blue and purple in the sky.

A glance at his watch tells him it’s well past noon—fuck, he’d wanted to be back by now, tell Cody that he would never leave him, never again, that they can overcome anything as long as Cody’s by his side.

He slings his backpack over his shoulder and climbs down the fire escape, sand flying up when he skips the last three steps and jumps down.

Despite his tired feet, he keeps a fast pace, wanting to kiss Cody and tell him they’re going to be alright. With every step he takes, he feels more certain, like a steadiness settling in his bones.

The trip back seems dreadfully long yet he’s only been walking for fifty minutes when the building they set up camp in last night comes into view. The hills loom behind it, vast and reassuring.

Noel rounds the corner, heart leaping at the thought of seeing Cody again. Then his heart sinks.

Cody stands in the sand, hands behind his head. Catching the movement in the corner of his eye, his head snaps to Noel, expression falling.

Noel realizes a beat too late what’s going on, doesn’t notice the six figures surrounding Cody until one aims his gun at him and yells at him to put his hands up. Then there’s just paralyzing fear that makes it hard to walk, to think, all he sees is Cody with the same fearful look in his eyes as he nears him. He raises his hands behind his head. Faintly, he notices that there’s blood on Cody’s shirt and he curses himself for not bandaging the wound. It must’ve reopened.

There’s so many things he wants to say, so many emotions and thoughts in his head that makes it hard to get anything out, and all he thinks is that he _should’ve been here, should’ve been at Cody’s side to protect him, shouldn’t have left him alone_.

“Noel,” Cody breathes once he’s in hearing range, elbows brushing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay,” Noel mumbles, voice shaking. His eyes scan his surroundings, trying to find a way out, but they’re cornered. He tries to block out the memories of his sister getting dragged away from him, taken by people in the identical black uniforms that will now bestow the same fate upon him. His shotgun burns on his back as they’re commanded to _get on their knees!_ but Noel knows he’ll be dead before he can try and pull a move.

“I can’t—they can’t take me—” Cody stammers. He sounds out of breath, voice cracking at whatever memories resurface.

Noel’s heart sinks through the fucking floor. But he can’t, and will never be able, to do what Cody is asking of him.

This is it, then, he thinks as he drops to the sand, knees groaning at the impact. This is how it ends.

“I love you,” he says, meeting Cody’s gaze briefly and brushing the back of his hand over his.

There are so many more things he wants to say, so many more things he wants to do with Cody. Build a future. Grow from the past. Be able to see Cody first thing in the morning and see him before he falls asleep.

Cody opens his mouth to say something, lips wobbling, but then there’s shots being fired and it takes Noel a split second to realize that it wasn’t the black uniforms.

Then he’s pressing Cody against the ground, shielding him with his body, eyes pressed shut as more shots ring through the air.

The sand is hot and rough against his arms. It’s all he can focus on.

There’s more shots, followed by silence, there’s yells and nearing footsteps and blinding sunlight, and then there’s a hand being extended to him.

Noel takes it.

EIGHT DAYS LATER

The bed is empty when Noel wakes up.

A whisper of warmth betrays that Cody hasn’t been up for long, but a wave of panic still surges through him when he can’t remember where he is and doesn’t know where Cody went.

He pushes back the covers and tries to find his shoes in the dark, nearly stumbling into the desk and cursing quietly. The door opens soundlessly and he locks the door to their cabin behind him, pocketing the key and trying to decide to go left or right.

He’s still unfamiliar with the ship. Its sheer size intimidates him, not to even mention the realization that they’re on the _ocean_ —it’s just miles and miles of water, not a single inch of land in sight.

Noel takes a right, heading for the nearest door that leads to the promenade deck. The salty air is something he’s barely used to, just like the swaying of the ship and the sound of waves crashing against the rusted hull. He’d been terribly sea sick the first two days, throwing up his guts and looking green in the face, and he’d spend those days inside the cabin, miserable and lonely. Cody had still been in the infirmary, healing from the wound in his neck and his thigh.

He’d gotten shot eight days ago. A bullet had struck him right in the leg, before Noel could press him to the ground, before the rebellion had gotten to them and saved them both from a fatal ending.

Noel thought that had been it, and where he thought the situation couldn’t have become worse a few minutes prior, it suddenly had turned worse—there was a possible outcome where Cody would die and he would live. Noel’s tears had splattered onto Cody’s face as he held his hand so tight it must’ve hurt, and Cody had just smiled at him and whispered that it was going to be okay.

He turned out to be right. Noel doesn’t remember much from the camp, just slivers. It was large, hundreds of kids and immunes together, and chaotic, people hauling all kinds of materials towards the docks. He’d wanted to follow after Cody who was only barely breathing, but instead he’d been taken to a large tent in the middle of the camp, where he had to explain how Cody and him had gotten in this situation, where they were from, if he’d seen any more black uniforms around. He’d told them all he knew, glancing at the two boys on the opposite side of the table, one dark-haired and broad-shouldered, the other blonde and lanky. The dark-haired boy was holding the other’s hand like his life was depending on it, and the sight made Noel’s heart clench in his chest. He recognized the look in the brunette's eyes; the one where he'd been so close to losing what meant most to him, still a little disbelieving that that hadn't happened. Noel had basically sprinted to the makeshift infirmary afterwards.

The sky outside is grey, so different from the deep blue on the mainland. The stars aren’t as visible here, but Noel isn’t complaining because Cody is still alive, because he’s walking and eating and talking again.

“There you are,” he says softly when he reaches the bow of the ship, finding Cody against the railing.

Cody doesn’t meet his gaze and instead keeps it fixed on the waves ahead of them.

“You okay?”

It’s quiet, save for the waves crashing against the hull. Then Cody turns to him, opening his mouth and closing it again. At last, he averts his gaze and tautly says, “You left me.”

Noel opens his mouth, but Cody holds up a hand and directly looks at him, silently begging him to let him speak.

“You left me, and at first I was so angry at you. Then I was just angry at myself, because I’d been stupid not to tell you. The one good thing in my life, and I’d let you walk away.” He shakes his head. “And then they were there, out of nowhere. I’d been furious, but in that moment I was glad you’d left, because that meant they wouldn’t take you too.”

Noel thinks he’s stopped breathing altogether.

“Suddenly you were back, and I—” Cody sucks in a breath. “I’ve never, ever felt terror like that in my life, Noel. Never. I was sure they were going to kill you, and that I’d have to see you bleed out in front of me, and—”

He grabs Cody’s hand, taking it from the railing and intertwining their fingers. “I’m here,” he says softly. “I’m still here.”

Cody squeezes his fingers. “I’m sorry. For keeping this from you, but—I never had a choice, Noel. I never did. And if I could change what I did, I would.”

“Don’t say that,” Noel whispers. “We’ve all had to do things we’re not proud of. That’s what this world has done to us. But every step you took, every choice you made, it brought you here—to me. I wouldn’t change that for the world.”

Cody looks up to him with glossy eyes, letting out a shaky breath.

“We’re gonna be okay,” he whispers those same words back to him, pulling him close to his chest and wrapping his arms around Cody.

He’s heard some people around the camp and on the ship call wherever they’re going the Safe Haven. Others call it Paradise.

Noel has Cody in his arms and can feel as he inhales and exhales deeply, as his heartbeat slowly returns to a steady pace, and Noel realizes that it doesn’t matter where they end up—he’s found his paradise already, and it’s right in front of him.

* * *

“Cody!”

Noel is sprinting through the small corridors, eyes wide and heart pounding. His feet slide across the floor when he skids to a halt, nearly missing the door to their cabin and hanging onto the doorpost not to fall over.

Cody jumps up from the bed, instantly alert.

“Come on,” Noel gestures, a little out of breath. “You need to come with me, now.”

At the urgency in Noel’s tone, a worried frown appears between his brows. Noel wants to smooth the crease with his thumb.

He beckons him closer and Cody slips on his shoes before he hesitantly takes Noel’s hand.

“What’s going on?”

Slowly, a smile spreads across Noel’s face.

“It’s raining outside.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so that was it!! i absolutely loved writing this, thank you so much for taking the time to read it. 
> 
> if you enjoyed this fic, please leave a comment or come talk to me on tumblr / twitter @sundaycore !! your support means the world to me. 
> 
> take care, 
> 
> marise <3


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